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To Preserve Plums or Damsons Whole

This recipe preserves plums or damsons whole by layering with sugar, covering, and treating with syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Preserve Plums or Damsons Whole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and syrup

  1. Weigh the fruit and use ¾ pound of crushed sugar for every pound of fruit.

  2. In a stone jar, layer the fruit and sugar alternately, then cover with cloth.

  3. Place the jar in an oven after baking bread until it cools.

  4. The next day, strain the syrup, boil and clarify it, then pour it over the fruit in glass jars or china pots.

  5. Cover the jars with egg tissue‑paper and secure with thick white paper.

  6. Alternatively, simmer the plums in water over low heat until they begin to peel, then remove the skins.

  7. Place the skinned plums in a jar and cover with thin syrup.

  8. Boil the syrup the next day, add the plums, and boil gently until cold.

Finish and seal

  1. Repeat the process, turning the plums in the syrup until nearly cold.

  2. Remove the plums, strain the syrup, add more sugar, skim it, then return the plums and boil until clear.

  3. Transfer the plums to jars and secure with paper.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Plum + syruptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Plum + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together794 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 or damsons
Form the main body of the preserve, holding their shape as they cook in syrup.
Crushed sugar
Preserves the fruit and sweetens it, drawing out moisture to form the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the plums gently in the syrup until clear. Boiling hard can break the skins and fruit apart, while gentle heat lets sugar slowly penetrate the fruit so it keeps its shape and turns clear.

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, syrup, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup, egg. 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.

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