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Plum Conserve

A preserve made from plums, sugar, walnuts, lemon juice and rind, and raisins, cooked until thickened and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Plum Conserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Wash the plums and remove the seeds.

  2. Weigh the fruit and combine all ingredients except the walnuts.

Cook and finish

  1. Cook the mixture until it thickens.

  2. Blanch the walnut meats for 2 minutes, then cut or chop them.

  3. Add the chopped walnuts to the mixture just before removing it from the stove.

  4. Pour the conserve into sterilized jars and seal.

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. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Walnut + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Plum + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together623 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Plum + walnuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Plums
Provide the fruit base and natural pectin that help the preserve thicken as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps set its thick texture as water evaporates.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavor that contrasts with the soft fruit.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavor and supports the set.
Seedless raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the walnuts just before removing the pan from the stove. Walnuts added too early soften and lose their crunch during long cooking. Adding them at the end keeps their texture and flavor distinct in the finished preserve.

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, walnut, lemon, raisin):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, walnut, lemon, raisin. 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.

More plum preserve recipes

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