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Dessert

Plum, Peach and Apple Preserves

Preserves made from plums, apples, and peaches boiled with sugar and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 163 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Plum, Peach and Apple Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Combine the plums, apples, and peaches in separate jars.

  2. Sugar the fruit to taste.

  3. Let the fruit stand overnight.

Make the syrup

  1. Drain the syrup into a preserving kettle.

  2. Boil the syrup gently for 2 minutes.

  3. Skim the syrup thoroughly.

Cook the fruit

  1. Add the peaches first.

  2. Boil the peaches until tender.

  3. Remove the peaches.

  4. Add the apples.

  5. Boil the apples until tender.

  6. Remove the apples.

  7. Add the plums.

  8. Boil the plums until clear.

  9. Keep the apples and peaches hot.

  10. Mix all the fruit together without mashing.

  11. Add spices as recommended for preserves.

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 + peachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Plum + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Apple + peachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Plums
Provide the main flavour and colour, and set clear, tender fruit pieces in the syrup.
Apples
Add body and natural pectin that helps the preserves thicken as they cook.
Peaches
Contribute soft texture and sweet, fragrant flavour to the blended preserves.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out syrup, helping preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Skim the syrup thoroughly. Foam and impurities that rise while the syrup boils can cloud the preserves and spoil flavour. Removing them keeps the syrup clear and the final preserves clean-tasting.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Apricotfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, peach, 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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