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Dessert

Plum Jelly and Marmalade

A preserved plum product made by cooking plums with soda, water, and sugar into jelly or marmalade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Plum Jelly and Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Sprinkle wild plums with soda.

  2. Pour hot water over the plums. Let stand for a few moments. Stir.

  3. Remove the plums.

  4. Cook them in enough water to cover. Boil until soft.

  5. Strain through a jelly bag without squeezing.

  6. Measure the juice.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil for 10 to 15 minutes.

  2. Add sugar at a ratio of 1 pint of sugar for each pint of juice.

  3. Boil again.

  4. Drop a little jelly on a saucer. Set it on ice.

Variations

  1. Skip soda when using cultivated plums.

  2. Press the pulp through a sieve to remove pits and skins.

  3. For marmalade, use half a pint of sugar for each pint of pulp.

  4. Boil for 10 to 15 minutes longer.

  5. For plum-apple jelly, mix 1 part plum juice with 2 parts apple juice.

  6. Finish as above.

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

Wild plums
Provide the fruit whose pectin and acid set the jelly and give its flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and works with the fruit's pectin and acid so the juice sets.
Soda
Sprinkled on the plums to be softened before cooking.

The step that matters

Boil again after adding sugar. Sugar must be dissolved and the mixture brought back to a full boil so pectin and acid can work together to set the jelly. Testing a drop on a cold saucer shows whether it has reached setting point.

“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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