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Plum Conserve
Three pounds of granulated sugar, six pounds of pitted plums, one pound of small raisins, one pound of walnuts, three oranges. Cut plums in small pieces, chop nuts, raisins and oranges, using rind and inside of oranges (not the white peelings); cook all together like marmalade.
— Mrs. Samuel Hopkins
Grant Hot House, Catskill, N.Y.
NEWART/
A conserve in the old sense: a fruit preserve carrying nuts, dried fruit and citrus, cooked down like marmalade. The proportions are generous and the method is left almost entirely to the cook, so a few things are worth fixing before you start.
- Add the walnuts lastNuts simmered for the full cooking time turn soft and take on a muddy, slightly rancid flavour as their oils break down. Stir the chopped walnuts in during the final five minutes, once the fruit has thickened.
- "Cook all together like marmalade"Meaning a slow, open simmer with frequent stirring until the mixture mounds on a spoon and a spoonful sets on a chilled plate — roughly 220F on a thermometer. Expect 45 minutes to an hour and a half depending on how juicy the plums are.
- The orangesUse the coloured zest and the flesh, and discard the bitter white pith, which is what "not the white peelings" means. Chop the zest finely; in a long cook it softens, but coarse strips stay chewy.
- Sugar ratio and keepingThree pounds of sugar to six pounds of fruit is well below jam proportions, so this sets soft and is not shelf-stable on its own. Treat it as a refrigerator preserve, or process it by a current tested water-bath method rather than simply sealing hot jars and hoping.
- "Small raisins"Probably seedless raisins or dried currants rather than the large seeded muscatels sold for cakes. Any seedless raisin or dried currant works.
- PlumsSix pounds pitted is roughly six and a half pounds whole. Italian prune plums or damsons are a good choice, with firm flesh and enough acid and pectin to help the set. Very ripe dessert plums will need longer cooking to thicken.
- Scale and vesselThe ingredients as listed come to about fourteen pounds, so this needs a wide, heavy pan of at least ten to twelve quarts. A narrow deep pot scorches on the bottom and evaporates too slowly.
- YieldA dozen or more half-pint jars, depending on how far you reduce it.
A conserve, in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American usage, was generally distinguished from jam by what went into it besides fruit and sugar: raisins, citrus and chopped nuts. Walnut-and-raisin plum conserves appear often in community cookbooks. An attribution to a named contributor with her address is characteristic of the fundraising cookbook, a form in which recipes circulated between neighbours; the terseness of the instructions assumes a reader who already knew what marmalade looked like when it was done.