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Plum Sweetmeats
When Damson plums are perfectly ripe, peel and divide them, taking out the stones; put them over a gentle heat to cook in their own juice; when soft rub them through a sieve, and return to the stove, adding just enough sugar to sweeten, a little cinnamon, and, when nearly done, wine in quantity to suit the taste. This is done more to keep the sweetmeats than for the flavor, as self-sealing cans are not used here, and all preserves are pasted up with the white of eggs. The common wine of the country is thin and sour and is much used in cookery. -Mrs. L. S. Williston, Heidelberg, Germany.
This is a German-style plum butter, and the cooking of it is sound; the problem is entirely in how the original stores it. The text is explicit that no sealing jars are used and that the pots are closed with paper pasted down with egg white.
- Why the storage failsA paper cover stuck down with egg white is not a hermetic seal and involves no heat processing of the filled jar. Mould and wild yeast colonise the surface of a shelf-stored fruit butter within weeks, and the wine that the writer relies on as a preservative is nowhere near enough alcohol to prevent it once the paste is opened or the paper lifts.
- Sugar is the other missing controlOld preserves that did keep under paper were sugar-saturated, often pound for pound with the fruit. "Just enough sugar to sweeten" gives a water activity well above the level that inhibits spoilage organisms, so this particular formula is the weakest possible case for a paper seal. If you want a shelf-stable plum butter, follow a current tested recipe with weighed sugar and a processing time.
- DamsonsTrue damsons are small, oval, blue-black and clingstone. The instruction to peel and stone raw fruit is close to impossible with them; cooking the fruit whole and soft first, then sieving the skins and stones out in one pass, is the easier route, though the recipe as printed calls for peeling and stoning first.
- Gentle heat, in their own juiceNo water is added. Damsons are juicy enough to release liquid within a few minutes over low heat, but the pan wants a heavy base and frequent stirring, since fruit purée scorches the instant it thickens.
- "Nearly done"The finish point for a sweetmeat of this kind is when a spoon drawn across the bottom of the pan leaves a channel that closes only slowly. Expect a good hour of reduction after sieving, depending on how wet the fruit was.
- The wineThe 'common wine of the country' would have been a cheap local table wine; the recipe itself says only that it was thin and sour, and much used in cookery. It goes in when the sweetmeat is nearly done, though the writer's own stated reason for adding it is to help the preserve keep rather than for flavour.
- Cinnamon'A little' here is genuinely little. The recipe gives no quantity; a modern cook might take it as well under a teaspoon of ground cinnamon to a couple of pounds of fruit, or a stick pulled out before sieving. It should read as background, not as spice.
Buckeye Cookery gathered contributions from a wide network of Ohio women and their correspondents, and this one arrives from Heidelberg, complete with an explanation of German kitchen conditions for readers who would not know them. What Mrs. Williston describes is close to Pflaumenmus, the thick sieved plum butter of German households, spread on bread and used as a filling, though hers is loosened toward what an American reader would recognise as a preserve. Her aside about self-sealing cans is the most historically telling line on the page: patent screw-band and glass-lid jars had been spreading through American kitchens since the late 1850s but were evidently not standard in the German household she knew, so preserves were still potted and covered with paper pasted down with the white of eggs.