Skip to main content
Dessert

Plum Preserve

A sweet preserve made by boiling plum juice with sugar, then setting in molds.

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

Why it works: Plum and cheese work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 176 recipes. Both carry 3-methyl-1-butanol, which smells fusel, malty. The science ↓

Plum Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Make the preserve

  1. Extract juice from plums.

  2. Strain the juice through a jelly bag.

  3. Weigh the juice.

  4. Boil the juice rapidly for 25 minutes.

  5. Add 3 lbs of sugar to the juice.

  6. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  7. Continue boiling for 10 more minutes.

  8. Remove any scum that forms.

  9. Pour the preserve into small molds or pans.

  10. Let the preserve set.

Make the cheese

  1. For the cheese, skin and stone the remaining plums.

  2. Boil the plums for 1 hour and 15 minutes over a brisk fire.

  3. Stir the plums constantly while boiling.

  4. Add 1 lb of powdered sugar to the plums.

  5. Boil for another 30 minutes.

  6. Press the mixture into shallow pans or molds.

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 + cheesetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methyl-1-butanol (fusel, malty).

  2. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + cheesetop 36% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,387 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Plums
Supply the juice and natural pectin and acid that help the preserve set.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and thickens it while helping it keep.

The step that matters

Stir the plums constantly while boiling. The mixture thickens as it cooks and its sugars can scorch on the base of the pan. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the cheese from burning.

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cheese):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

More plum preserve recipes

Green Orange 18Damson 9Mogul 7 See all 25 →

You might also like

Cheese BallsCheese Balls97 recipesCheese CakeCheese Cake55 recipesCream CheeseCream Cheese46 recipesLemon PieLemon Pie37 recipes