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Dessert

Magnum Bonum Plums

Preserved plums made by simmering plums in syrup and drying them.

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 ↓

Magnum Bonum Plums

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Prick the plums with a needle to prevent bursting.

  2. Simmer the plums gently in thin syrup.

  3. Place the plums in a china bowl and let them cool.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. After three days, make a syrup with 3 lbs of sugar and 5 lbs of fruit, using just enough water to dissolve the sugar.

  2. Boil the plums in the fresh syrup after draining the first syrup.

  3. Cook gently until the plums are clear and the syrup adheres to them.

Pot and finish

  1. Transfer the plums one by one into small pots and pour the syrup over them.

  2. Reserve some syrup and boil it quickly.

  3. Give the plums a warm bath, drain, and place them on plates in a cool oven.

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

Plums
Provide the fruit that becomes the preserve, holding their shape when pricked and gently cooked.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws water out of it, thickening the syrup that clings to the plums.

The step that matters

Cook gently until the plums are clear. High heat splits the skins and breaks down the flesh, while gentle simmering lets sugar slowly penetrate so the plums stay whole and plump.

“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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