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Dessert

Plum Jam

Jam made from plums, sugar, and a little water, cooked until tender and then sealed in jars.

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 ↓

Plum Jam

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the plums

  1. Wash the plums and cut them nearly to the stone.

  2. Add a small amount of water and place on moderate heat (350°F / 175°C).

  3. Stir and remove the stones as they separate from the pulp.

Make the jam

  1. When the plums are tender, rub them through a sieve.

  2. Add ¾ pound of sugar to the plum pulp and boil together for 20 minutes.

Seal

  1. Seal in glass jars.

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 pulp, natural pectin and acidity that help the jam thicken and set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, thickens the pulp as it boils and helps preserve the jam.

The step that matters

Boiling the pulp with sugar. Sugar and fruit pectin set together as the mixture boils and concentrates. Boiling too briefly leaves the jam runny, while boiling too long can make it stiff and dull in flavour.

“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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