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Magnum Bonum, or Other Large Plums, Compote Of
Take off the stalks, and wipe the fruit. Simmer a pound of the plums in a syrup, made with six ounces of sugar dissolved in half a pint of water, and according to the variety and acidity of fruit, add more sugar if required. Stew very gently for twenty minutes. Time, ten minutes to boil the syrup.
A plain sugar-syrup compote of the sort Victorian cooks made in quantity during the late-summer plum glut. The whole thing turns on the strength of the syrup and on not overcooking the fruit.
- The plum itselfMagnum Bonum is an old English name for a large oval cooking plum, yellow or red, also sold as Yellow Egg or White Magnum Bonum. It is tart and firm and holds its shape. Any firm cooking plum works: Italian prune plums, damsons (add sugar), or slightly underripe Victorias.
- MeasuresHalf a pint is 10 fl oz in the British measure of this book, about 1¼ cups. Six ounces of sugar is a scant cup granulated. That gives a light syrup, around 1 part sugar to 1.6 parts water by weight — deliberately thin, so the fruit does not candy.
- Boil the syrup firstThe "ten minutes to boil the syrup" appears to be a separate stage before the fruit goes in: dissolve the sugar completely and let it boil, then add the plums. The point of the order is to have the sugar fully in solution before the fruit meets it.
- Twenty minutes is for firm fruitRipe plums may collapse well before that. Judge by the fruit: they are done when a skewer meets no resistance but the skins are still intact. Keep the liquid at a bare tremble, not a simmer that moves the fruit around, or you will end up with skins floating in purée.
- Adjusting for acidityThe instruction to add more sugar according to variety and acidity is the important one; the recipe puts that judgement at the syrup stage, before the fruit goes in. Very sour plums will want noticeably more.
- Splitting the skinsWhole plums often burst on one side as the flesh swells. Pricking each once with a needle before cooking, or halving and stoning them, gives a tidier result and lets the syrup into the fruit.
- Yield and servingA pound of plums will give two to four dessert portions. Cool the fruit in its syrup — it goes on absorbing as it cools — and serve cold with cream, custard or a plain sponge. It keeps three or four days covered in the refrigerator.
A compote is fruit cooked and left whole in sugar syrup, distinct from a jam or a preserve in that it is made to be eaten within days rather than stored; the word comes to English from French in the seventeenth century and shares a root with compost, both meaning something put together. Magnum Bonum — Latin for "great good" — is a name attached to several oversized varieties of the period, most familiarly a large egg-shaped culinary plum grown widely in English gardens and orchards for stewing, bottling and tarts rather than eating raw. Cassell's places this among a run of near-identical compote entries, one per fruit, which is how a Victorian dictionary of cookery handled seasonality: the book supplied the syrup ratio and the cooking time for each. The thin syrup and the short list of ingredients reflect a dish that was expected on the table repeatedly through August and September, not a set piece.