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Preserved Plums
With the common wild or blue plums they may be steamed or dropped for a minute or two in boiling water to loosen the skin, which may then easily be removed. After this proceed as with other preserves.
With other plums prick the skins in several places with a large needle to keep them from bursting, then place in layers in preserving kettle, allowing same amount of sugar. Let all come to a boil slowly; take out plums with skimmer; drain, and spread on plates in the sun. Cook down the syrup slowly for half an hour, skimming often; place plums in this for ten minutes (boiling them). Drain and dry as before and when quite cold place in jars, heated pouring the boiling syrup over the fruit and sealing a once.
PICKLED PLUMS No. I Pour over hard, unripe plums which have been washed, dried, and pricked in a number of places, boiling, spiced vinegar, repeating three times.
PICKLED PLUMS No. 2 Plums of any kind may also be pickled like cherries (cold), placed in jars in layers, alternating with layers of sugar; cold vinegar poured over, and sealed.
BRANDIED PLUMS No. I Select greengages which are full-sized but still hard, and place in layers in jars. To each pint of white brandy allow two and one-half ounces granulated sugar; pour over and seal tight.
BRANDIED PLUMS No. 2 Make a syrup as for preserves. When thick add twothirds part of brandy and pour over the fruit.
This is a cluster of four preserving methods from the era before tested canning procedures, and every one of them ends with fruit sealed in a jar that has never been processed. The notes below explain the vocabulary and where the failures lie.
- Open-kettle sealingPouring boiling syrup over fruit in a heated jar and sealing at once was standard practice for a century, and it is the method every current canning authority has withdrawn. Nothing guarantees the jar contents reach or hold a lethal temperature, and the seal formed by cooling syrup alone is unreliable. High-sugar plum preserves are an acidic, hostile environment, but the jar can still ferment, mould through the surface, or draw in air as the seal relaxes.
- The cold-pack picklePickled Plums No. 2 puts raw fruit, dry sugar and cold vinegar into a jar and seals it with no heat at any stage. The acidity of the finished brine is unmeasured and depends entirely on how much juice the plums give up; nineteenth-century household vinegar also varied widely in strength, where modern bottled vinegar is standardised at 5 per cent. There is no way to know what you have made.
- Sun-drying between boilingsThe preserved-plum method spreads hot, sugary fruit on plates in the open air, until cold, before returning it to the syrup. This is an uncovered warm surface at a temperature that suits spoilage organisms, and it invites insects. The technique produced the glossy, semi-candied fruit the period admired, but it has no place in a sealed jar today.
- Use a tested recipe insteadFor plum preserves, plum pickle or brandied plums, work from a current tested recipe with specified processing times for your jar size and altitude. Do not adapt the timings above.
- "Allowing same amount of sugar"Almost certainly sugar equal to the weight of the prepared fruit, pound for pound, the classic preserve ratio; the recipe itself does not say whether it means weight or volume, though period practice points to weight.
- GreengagesA small, firm, green-gold dessert plum, still grown and sold in late summer where plums are farmed seriously. Reine Claude is the same fruit under its French name. The recipe wants them full-sized but hard, because a ripe gage collapses in spirit.
- White brandyAn unaged grape spirit, colourless because it never sat in wood; the period equivalent of what you would now buy as eau-de-vie or an unaged marc. A colourless spirit keeps the fruit pale, which may be part of why it was specified. Ordinary aged cognac will work in flavour terms but will tint the fruit.
- Pricking the skinsThis is the one step in the preserved-plum method worth carrying forward on its own terms. Unpricked plums burst as the flesh expands faster than the skin, and the fruit disintegrates into the syrup. A large needle or a skewer, several holes per plum, as the recipe directs.
Plums were the workhorse of the late-summer preserving cupboard, cheap by the bushel and prone to going over within days of picking, which is why a single book section carries preserved, pickled and brandied versions of the same fruit. The recipe draws a distinction between "common wild or blue plums" and "other plums," the former being fruit whose skins are easily removed after scalding. Brandied fruit of this sort belonged to a tradition of spirit-preserved delicacies that reached back well before canning: alcohol at sufficient strength does the preserving on its own, which is why those two recipes involve no cooking at all in the first version. Sweet-sour spiced pickled fruit, served alongside cold meat and game, was a fixture of the American and British table through the nineteenth century and is the ancestor of the pickled peaches and spiced crabapples that still turn up at holiday meals.