Name: Plum Compote
Ingredients: nice ripe plums or prunes; a little water; 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 Compote

Ingredients

nice ripe plums or prunes
a little water
sugar

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Wash and stone the plums or prunes.
Place them in a dish with a little water and a generous amount of sugar.

Bake and serve

Cover the dish tightly and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.
Serve the compote with the juice in a glass dish, chilled.

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 or prunes: Provide the fruit that softens and releases juice to form the compote.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the fruit.

“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.