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To Preserve Plums Without the Skins

Preserves plums by removing skins and cooking them in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Preserve Plums Without the Skins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Pour boiling water over the plums.

  2. Cover the plums until cool.

  3. Remove the skins.

Make and pour the syrup

  1. Make a syrup with 1 pound of sugar and 1 cup of water.

  2. Bring the syrup to a boil.

  3. Pour the boiling syrup over the plums.

  4. Let the plums sit for 1-2 days.

  5. Drain the syrup.

  6. Boil the syrup again.

  7. Skim the syrup clear.

  8. Pour the hot syrup over the plums.

  9. Let the plums sit until the next day.

Cook and finish

  1. Boil the plums gently in the syrup until clear.

  2. Use a skimmer to transfer the plums to pots or jars.

  3. Boil the syrup until rich and thick.

  4. Remove any scum from the syrup.

  5. Let the syrup cool and settle.

  6. Pour the cooled syrup over the plums.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Plums
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and clear as it is cooked in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, once boiled, thickens the syrup and helps preserve the plums.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can form a syrup that penetrates and coats the fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until rich and thick. Sugar concentration determines preservation. If the syrup is too dilute it will not thicken or keep the fruit well, so it should be boiled down before the plums are covered.

“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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