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Very Fine Imperatrice Plum Marmalade

A sweet preserve made from ripe Imperatrice plums and powdered sugar.

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 in a preserving pan.

Cook the marmalade

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

  2. Remove the pan from 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

Plums
Provide the fruit body, natural pectin and acidity that help the marmalade thicken and set.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and, once boiled, concentrates the mixture so it can gel and keep well.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture quickly for 15 minutes after adding the sugar. Pectin and sugar only set when the sugar concentration and temperature are high enough. A gentle simmer can leave the marmalade runny, so the mixture must boil hard for the full time.

“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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