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Preserved Plums Without the Skins
Pour boiling water over large egg or other suitable plums; cover them until cold, then pull off the skins. Make a syrup of a pound of sugar and a teacupful of water for each pound of fruit, and pour it over; let them remain for a day or two, then drain off and boil again; skim it clear and pour it hot over the plums. Let them remain until the next day, then put them over the fire in the syrup; boil them very gently until clear; take them from the syrup with a skimmer into the pots or jars; boil the syrup until rich and thick; take off any scum which may arise, then let it cool and settle, and pour it over the plums.
This is a three-day sugar preserve, not a quick jam: the repeated draining and reboiling gradually drives sugar into the fruit so the plums stay whole and translucent instead of collapsing. The hinge is patience — every stage of boiling is gentle, and the fruit is never stirred.
- A teacupfulTeacup measures in American books of this period were not standardised; the figure most often given is about 3/4 cup (6 fl oz), though some sources equate a teacup with a gill (4 fl oz). Taking the larger figure, each pound of fruit gets a pound of sugar (about 2 1/4 cups) and about 6 ounces of water — a very heavy syrup, which is what keeps the fruit firm.
- Egg plums"Egg plum" was a class of large oval plums, mostly yellow varieties such as Yellow Egg and White Magnum Bonum, grown precisely for preserving. Italian prune plums, greengages or any firm freestone plum will behave the same way; avoid soft, very ripe fruit, which will shred when the skins come off.
- SkinningThe boiling-water pour is a blanch. Modern practice is to hold the plums in the water 30 to 60 seconds and then chill them in ice water rather than letting them sit until cold in the hot water, which partly cooks the flesh and makes it harder to lift out whole later.
- Why the fruit rests in cold syrupWhy the fruit rests in the syrup -- The one- and two-day soaks are the point of the method. The syrup goes on hot and the fruit then stands as it cools; over the rest the sugar slowly draws water out of the plums and takes its place. Boiling them straight through in heavy syrup instead makes them shrivel and toughen.
- "Boil them very gently until clear"Clear means the flesh has become translucent all the way through, usually 10 to 20 minutes at a bare simmer. A rolling boil at this stage will burst the skinless fruit.
- "Rich and thick"The final syrup is finished when it reaches about 220 to 222F on a thermometer, or sheets from a spoon. Anything thinner will not hold; take it much further and it will thicken toward candy as it cools.
- SealingThe original simply pours cooled syrup over fruit in open pots — an unsealed preserve that relied on a heavy sugar cap, a paper cover and a cold larder. Plums are high-acid, so the practical risk is surface mould rather than anything worse, but if you want shelf storage, pack hot into hot jars and process in a boiling-water bath following current published times for plums. Otherwise treat it as a refrigerator preserve.
- YieldEach pound of plums plus a pound of sugar fills roughly one pint jar. Four pounds of fruit is a sensible batch for a single wide pan; crowding the pan means the fruit stews rather than clears.
Preserving whole fruit in a pound-for-pound sugar syrup is the older, costlier branch of fruit preservation, distinct from jam and jelly: the aim was intact glistening fruit for the dessert table or for serving with cream and cake, and skinning the plums was a further refinement. Recipes of this kind appear throughout eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English and American household books, and they persisted into the era of the newer canning instructions that came in with cheap glass jars and rubber-ringed lids. The "egg" plums called for were the big oval dessert varieties of the period, several of which have largely dropped out of commercial orchards; one such name is Yellow Egg.