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Very Fine Imperatrice-plum Marmalade

A marmalade made from ripe imperatrice plums and powdered sugar, boiled until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Very Fine Imperatrice-plum Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Weigh 6 pounds of ripe imperatrice plums, ensuring they are not touched by frost.

  2. Cut each plum and place them into a preserving pan.

Cook

  1. Boil the plums for 35 to 40 minutes, removing the stones as they rise to the surface.

  2. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in 2 pounds of powdered sugar.

  3. Boil the mixture quickly for 15 minutes.

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

Imperatrice plums
Provide the fruit, pectin and tartness that form the marmalade's body and flavour.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, with boiling, helps it thicken and set.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture quickly for 15 minutes. Once the sugar is added, a brisk boil is needed to evaporate water and reach the concentration at which the fruit pectin and sugar set. A gentle simmer may leave the marmalade runny.

“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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