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French Plums, Stewed
Put into a clean stewpan enough water to cover a pound and a half of French plums, stew them for an hour, then strain and boil the water, three-quarters of a pint, with half a pound of sugar. When it has boiled, and been well skimmed, and is quite clear, add the rind and juice of a lemon with the plums, and simmer very gently. A glass of port wine will improve the flavour and appearance of the fruit, and may be added at the same time with the plums. Serve in a glass dish. Time to stew, one hour or more, according to the quality; to simmer, one hour and a half. Probable cost of plums, 1s. per pound. Sufficient for a large dish.
"French plums" are dried prunes, and the whole recipe is a slow syrup poach. The one thing worth changing is the clock.
- French plumsThese are dried plums from southwestern France, sold today as prunes, usually the Agen type. Buy them with the stones in if you can find them, since the flesh holds its shape better than pitted supermarket prunes.
- Total cooking timeAn hour of stewing plus an hour and a half of simmering is far more than modern prunes need. Today's fruit is partly rehydrated and semi-dried, so 20 to 30 minutes of soaking-stew and another 20 to 30 minutes in the syrup will give whole, glossy fruit rather than puree.
- UnitsThree-quarters of an imperial pint of the strained cooking liquid is 15 fluid ounces, close to 1 3/4 US cups. Half a pound of sugar is a generous cup. A wineglass of port in this period is usually reckoned at roughly 2 to 2 1/2 fluid ounces, a scant third of a cup.
- Why strain and re-boilStraining the liquid off the fruit lets it be boiled with the sugar and skimmed without breaking the plums. The recipe's insistence on boiling and skimming until the syrup is quite clear before the fruit goes back in is the point of the step.
- The lemonPare the rind in wide strips with a knife rather than grating it, so it can be lifted out before serving. The recipe adds rind and juice with the plums at the start of the simmer; if you want a sharper syrup, hold back part of the juice until the end.
- StewpanUse a wide, non-reactive pan so the fruit sits in a single layer. The lemon and wine will pick up metallic notes from bare cast iron or unlined aluminium.
- Serving and yieldA pound and a half of prunes with syrup will serve eight or so as a dessert. The recipe calls for a glass dish, which is presumably why the clarity of the syrup matters; cream or a plain baked custard suits it.
Dried plums from the Agen district of the Lot-et-Garonne were a familiar import into British kitchens through the nineteenth century, and "French plum" was generally taken to mean the large, sweet, carefully dried fruit rather than the cheaper prunes sold for everyday stewing. A shilling a pound was not a trifling price, which fits a dish finished with lemon and port and sent to the table in glass. The method is a plain one -- rehydrate the fruit in water, then clarify and sweeten that same liquid into a syrup, so nothing of the flavour is thrown away. Stewed dried fruit of this kind was a common cold dessert in households without ice, and the recipe itself says the port improves both the flavour and the appearance.