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Dessert

To Preserve Fruit for Tarts

Preserves cherries, plums, or American apples in jars with sugar, boiled, then stored dry.

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 Preserve Fruit for Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather ripe cherries, plums, or American apples.

  2. Place the fruit in small jars that hold 1 pound each.

  3. Sprinkle 6 oz. of pounded sugar over each jar.

  4. Cover each jar with 2 bladders, tied down securely.

Cook and store

  1. Place the jars in a large stewpan filled with water up to the neck of the jars. Boil gently for 3 hours.

  2. Store the jars in a dry place, free from damp.

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

Cherries, plums, or american apples
Provide the fruit that softens and holds its shape as it is gently cooked in its own juices.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out juice, helping preserve it during long gentle cooking.

The step that matters

Keeping the water at a gentle boil around the jars. A vigorous boil can crack jars or force water in under the bladder covers, spoiling the fruit. Steady gentle heat cooks the fruit through evenly over the full three hours without disturbing the seals.

“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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