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Dessert

Wild Plum Butter

A preserved spread made from plums, water, baking soda, and sugar, cooked until mushy and boiled with equal parts pulp and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Wild Plum Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Pour scalding water mixed with baking soda over the plums and let stand until nearly cold.

  2. Drain and wash the plums in clear water.

Cook and strain

  1. Cover the plums with hot water and cook until mushy.

  2. Run the cooked plums through a colander or a fine mesh bag.

Sweeten and boil

  1. Use equal parts of plum pulp and granulated sugar, stir, and boil.

  2. Do not boil as long as other butters to avoid a strong and stiff texture.

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 pulp that becomes the butter's body and fruit flavor.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the butter thicken and set as it cooks.
Baking soda
Its alkaline solution softens the plum skins so the fruit breaks down easily.

The step that matters

Boil for less time than other butters. Long boiling concentrates the sugar and pectin in the pulp, which makes the butter set strong and stiff. Stopping earlier keeps it soft and spreadable.

“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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