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Another Way to Preserve Green Gages

A preserve made from green plums and sugar, cooked until clear and finished with kernels.

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 ↓

Another Way to Preserve Green Gages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Put the plums into boiling water and remove the skin.

  2. Divide the plums and sprinkle half of the sugar over them; let sit for several hours.

Cook

  1. In a preserving pan, combine the plums with the remaining sugar.

  2. Boil until the plums look clear, skimming off any scum that rises.

  3. A few minutes before removing from heat, add the kernels.

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

Green gages (plums)
Provide the fruit, whose pectin and acidity help the preserve set and balance sweetness.
Pounded loaf sugar
Sweetens and draws moisture out of the fruit, and helps the preserve thicken and keep.

The step that matters

Boil until the plums look clear, skimming off any scum. Boiling must be continued until the fruit clears and the syrup thickens enough to set. Skimming removes foam and impurities that would otherwise cloud the preserve and affect its texture and keeping quality.

“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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