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Dessert

To Dry Plums and Small Fruits

A method for drying plums, peaches, or apples by layering with sugar and sun-drying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

To Dry Plums and Small Fruits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pit the fruit.

  2. Layer the fruit in jars with sugar, using ½ pound of sugar for every pound of fruit.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours.

Boil and drain

  1. Boil the fruit for 10 minutes, skimming off any scum that rises.

  2. Remove the fruit from the syrup.

  3. Drain the fruit.

Dry

  1. Spread the fruit thinly on dishes or hair sieves to dry in the sun.

  2. Turn the fruit every few hours until fully dry.

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
Provides the fruit that is concentrated and preserved as it dries.
Sugar
Draws water out of the fruit and adds sweetness, helping preserve it.

The step that matters

Turn the fruit every few hours until fully dry. Turning exposes all surfaces to air and sun so the fruit dries evenly. Thin spreading and regular turning help prevent damp spots, which can spoil before the fruit is fully dry.

“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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