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Dessert

Plum Roll

A dried roll made from mashed ripe plums sweetened with sugar and dusted with powdered sugar.

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 ↓

Plum Roll

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the plum mash

  1. Mash the plums and remove the pits.

  2. Spread the plum mash into plates about ½ inch thick.

Sweeten and dry

  1. Slowly add sugar until the mixture can no longer absorb more.

  2. Dry the plum sheets in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

Finish and store

  1. Remove the thin sheets from the plates and dust with powdered sugar.

  2. Roll the sheets and store them in bags or jars.

  3. Soak in cold water for a few hours before use.

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

Very ripe plums
Provide the fruit pulp that becomes the thin, flexible sheets, along with natural sweetness and moisture.
Sugar
Sweetens the mash and binds its moisture, helping the sheets dry into a chewy, preserved texture.
Powdered sugar
Dusts the finished sheets, adding a light sweet coating on the surface.

The step that matters

Drying the plum sheets. Sugar and fruit pulp darken and scorch easily at high heat, and over-drying makes sheets brittle. A moderate oven dries them slowly while keeping them pliable enough to roll.

“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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