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Stewed Pruneaux De Tours, or Tours Dried Plums

Stewed dried plums simmered with water, wine, and sugar until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and port wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 32 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Stewed Pruneaux De Tours, or Tours Dried Plums

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine dried plums, water, and light claret or port wine.

  2. Bring to a simmer and cook for 1½ hours until plums are tender.

  3. Add sugar when the plums are half-cooked and stir until dissolved.

  4. Continue cooking for an additional 30 minutes or until desired consistency.

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 + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Port wine + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together805 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried plums
Softens during long simmering and forms the body of the dish.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and thickens the cooking liquid as it dissolves.
Light claret or port wine
Adds fruity depth and aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar fully when the plums are half-cooked. Stirring the sugar in until fully dissolved gives the syrup an even sweetness instead of grainy pockets. Adding it at the halfway point, while the plums are still firm enough to hold their shape, lets the syrup develop gradually as the fruit continues to soften and the liquid reduces.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits about as well
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, sugar. 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.

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