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To Preserve Magnum-Bonum Plums

A method for preserving Magnum-Bonum plums in syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Magnum-Bonum Plums

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Prick the plums with a needle and slit the skin at the seam with a sharp knife.

  2. Simmer the plums gently in a thin syrup made from 1 pound of sugar and 1 pint of water.

  3. Transfer the plums to a bowl.

  4. Pour the syrup over them when cold.

  5. Let the plums sit for three days.

Make the preserve

  1. Make a new syrup with 3 pounds of sugar and 5 pounds of plums, using just enough water to dissolve the sugar.

  2. Drain the plums from the first syrup.

  3. Boil them gently in the new syrup until clear and syrup adheres to them.

  4. Place the plums in small pots.

  5. Pour the syrup over them.

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 that is softened in syrup and becomes the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, helps preserve it by drawing out water.

The step that matters

Boil the plums gently in the new syrup. Boiling hard can break the skins and cloud the syrup. A gentle simmer lets the sugar slowly penetrate the fruit, so the plums turn clear and the syrup clings to them.

“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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