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Dessert

Magnum Bonum Plums

A preserved plum jam made by scalding plums, clarifying sugar, and boiling until transparent.

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 ↓

Magnum Bonum Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Gather the plums with stalks and scald them in boiling water.

  2. Remove the skins, leaving the stalks on.

  3. If not quite ripe, simmer the plums for a few minutes.

Make the syrup

  1. Clarify the sugar and boil it until it reaches a high candy stage.

Cook and set

  1. Add the plums and boil for fifteen minutes.

  2. Carefully transfer the plums to a basin and let them stand for one to two days.

  3. Boil the plums again for ten minutes or until they are perfectly transparent.

  4. Put the plums into jars, strain the syrup through a sieve, and pour it over the plums.

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, pectin and natural acid that give the jam its body and flavour.
Fine loaf sugar
Sweetens the jam and, boiled to a high candy stage, thickens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the plums again until perfectly transparent. Standing in syrup lets sugar slowly penetrate the fruit. Boiling again drives off water and concentrates the sugar, so the plums turn clear and the jam sets. Stopping too early leaves it runny; boiling too long can make it stiff and dark.

“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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