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Greengages, with Cream
Put two dozen sound ripe greengages in a stewpan with ten ounces of loaf sugar and half a pint of water. Put the pan on the fire with the lid on, and when the sugar is melted, simmer slowly for ten minutes, shaking the pan gently two or three times. Lift out the greengages one by one, so as to avoid breaking them, and put them into a glass dish. Strain the syrup, rinse and wipe the pan, pour the liquid back again, put on the fire, and boil until it is reduced to about half. Skim well, add a drop or two of spinach-juice to give the syrup a good colour; let it cool a little and pour it over the fruit. Whip stiffly a pint of good cream, and serve it separately in custard cups. Probable cost, 2s. 3d.
A simple compote in heavy syrup, and the whole thing hinges on keeping the fruit whole. Everything else is timing and the strength of the syrup.
- The hinge: barely simmerGreengages collapse the moment the syrup moves at more than a lazy tremble. Keep the liquid at the point where a bubble breaks now and then, and shake the pan rather than stirring, exactly as directed. Very ripe fruit may need seven or eight minutes rather than ten.
- Imperial measuresHalf a pint in this book is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups. A pint of cream is 20 fl oz, about 2 1/2 US cups whipped to roughly double that volume.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar broken from a cone, prized because it was clean and gave a clear syrup. Ordinary granulated white sugar is its direct descendant; ten ounces is about 1 1/3 to 1 1/2 cups.
- Spinach juiceA Victorian kitchen colouring, made by pounding spinach and pressing out the green liquid. Commercial green colours of the day were unreliable and some were copper-based, which may be part of why kitchens made their own. It is purely cosmetic here and can be left out with no loss to the flavour.
- Reducing the syrupBoiled to half, the syrup will be thick and quite sweet, near a light preserving syrup. Pour it over the fruit while still warm but not hot, or the greengages will go on cooking and split in the dish.
- Rinsing the panNot fussiness. Sugar caught on the sides of the pan scorches on the second boiling and turns the syrup cloudy and faintly bitter.
- Finding greengagesGreengages are a small green-gold dessert plum, in season for a few weeks in late summer and still hard to buy outside Europe. Any firm, sweet, small plum works; damsons and other sour varieties will need more sugar.
- CreamFor whipping, use cream of at least 35 percent fat, sold as heavy or double cream. The recipe adds no sugar to the cream: it is whipped plain and served separately, with the syrup carrying the sweetness.
- YieldTwo dozen plums serves six to eight as a light dessert. It keeps a day or two covered in the refrigerator, though the fruit softens.
Greengages are a variety of plum long associated in English with Sir William Gage, an eighteenth-century Suffolk landowner whose gardener is traditionally said to have grown them from French stock in which the labels had been lost; in France the same fruit is the reine-claude, named for Claude of France. The method is worth noting for itself: poaching whole fruit in syrup, then reducing that syrup separately so the fruit is never overcooked in it. The costing of 2s. 3d. is a reminder of what the book was for -- Cassell's attached a probable cost to its recipes, so a cook could be held to a budget.