Name: Plum Jam
Ingredients: 1 gallon large long black plums; 3 pounds good moist sugar

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 Jam

Ingredients

1 gallon large long black plums
3 pounds good moist sugar

Directions

Prepare

Choose large long black plums.
Combine plums and sugar in a pot.

Cook and jar

Bake until the plums begin to crack.
Transfer the jam into jars that can be used at once to prevent spoilage.

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.

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: Provide the fruit flesh, natural pectin and acidity that help the jam thicken and set.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and binds water so the jam thickens and keeps well.

“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.