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Stewed Pruneaux De Tours, or Tours Dried Plums

A slow-cooked dish of dried plums simmered with water, wine, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and red wine work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 107 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Stewed Pruneaux De Tours, or Tours Dried Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the plums

  1. In a pot, combine dried plums, water, and light red wine.

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

Add sugar and finish

  1. Add sugar when plums are half-done and stir until dissolved.

  2. Continue cooking for an additional 30 minutes or longer 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 + red winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together107 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. Red wine + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together864 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried plums
Form the main body of the dish, softening as they simmer and providing their own natural sweetness.
Light red wine
Adds acidity and fruity flavor to the cooking liquid, balancing the sweetness of the plums.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it dissolves into the cooking liquid, gives the syrup more body.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar at the halfway point. Sugar added while the plums are half-done should be stirred until fully dissolved, so it sweetens the liquid evenly rather than settling and scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Pearfits about as well
  2. Plumthe original
  3. Vanillafits less well
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against red 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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