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To Preserve Mogul or Egg Plums

A method for preserving Mogul or egg plums in clarified sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Preserve Mogul or Egg Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Prick and scald the plums in water over a very slow fire.

  2. Let the plums sit in the scalding water until the next day.

  3. Drain the plums.

  4. Place them in a preserving pan.

Syrup and soaking

  1. Mix 1 pint of water with 1 quart of clarified sugar to reduce it.

  2. Pour enough syrup to cover the plums.

  3. Simmer gently for 5 minutes.

  4. Let the plums stand for 4 days.

  5. Drain the plums.

  6. Boil the syrup until it bubbles.

  7. Gently pour the syrup over the plums.

  8. Let the plums stand for 6 days.

  9. Drain the plums again.

  10. Boil the syrup until it bubbles strongly.

  11. Add more clarified sugar to cover the plums.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Plums
Their flesh and skin hold the fruit's structure and flavour through repeated soaking in syrup.
Clarified sugar
Sugar draws water out of the fruit and builds a syrup that sweetens and preserves it.
Water
Dissolves the sugar into a syrup and carries heat for scalding the plums.

The step that matters

Simmering and boiling the syrup. Syrup must be brought to a full boil each time it is poured back over the plums. Sugar concentration rises as water evaporates, which is what preserves the fruit; a weak or under-boiled syrup can let the plums spoil.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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