Why it works: Plum and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,313 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Plum Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Prepare a short pastry or suet pastry.
Wash and skin the plums, if desired.
Remove the kernels from the stones, blanch, and chop the kernels.
Add the chopped kernels and sugar to the plums, adjusting sugar based on ripeness.
Bake
Fill the pastry with the plum mixture and bake until golden.
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.
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Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,313 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Plums
- Provide the main fruit filling, with flavor and moisture that softens as it bakes.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the plums, adjusted for their ripeness.
- Short pastry
- Forms the crust that encloses the filling and browns during baking.
The step that matters
Adjusting sugar to ripeness. Plums vary in sweetness and tartness as they ripen. Tasting the fruit and adding sugar to match keeps the filling balanced, since sugar also draws out juice and affects how the filling sets.
“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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