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Dessert

A French Plum Pie

A pie made with dried French plums stewed in water and port wine, sweetened with sugar, and topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and port wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 32 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

A French Plum Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Stew the dried French plums in enough water to cover them until tender.

  2. Add the port wine and wait to add the sugar until the plums are tender.

Assemble and bake

  1. Once tender, pour the plums and their liquid into a pie dish.

  2. Cover with rich puff pastry and bake.

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 + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Port wine + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together805 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried french plums
Provide the main fruit flavour and soft, jammy body for the filling.
Port wine
Adds depth and aroma to the plum filling as it stews.
White sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tart dried plums.
Rich puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp top that puffs and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Add the sugar only after the plums are tender. Sugar strengthens the plums' cell walls and slows their softening, so adding it early can leave the fruit firm and tough. Waiting lets the plums soften fully first.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits about as well
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, sugar. 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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