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To Preserve Plums

A method for preserving plums by boiling and storing them in jars with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Preserve Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Fill and cover

  1. Fill jars with good sound plums.

  2. Place jars in an oven until the top plums begin to crack.

  3. Fill each jar with boiling water.

  4. Cover jars immediately with bladders while hot.

Store and use

  1. Store jars in a dry place.

  2. When ready to use, boil the jars and add sugar to taste.

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. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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 fruit itself, supplying the main flavor and the texture that the preserve keeps.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, which is added to taste when the preserved plums are used.

The step that matters

Heating the jars in the oven until the top plums begin to crack. Heat softens the fruit and drives out some air, so the jar can be filled and sealed well. Heating too long makes the plums soft and collapsing, while stopping too early leaves the fruit unevenly warmed. Watching for the first cracks helps keep the fruit firm.

“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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