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Sweet Plum Marmalade
If plums are very large, soft, sweet, and thoroughly mature, peel and remove seeds and skins. They will require no water. Place in crock and proceed as with peach jelly to extract juice. Strain this off, through sieve, and add two-thirds as much sugar as pulp. Simmer slowly, stirring carefully, and cook twenty minutes or until thick. The fruit juice may be added or not.
A skeleton recipe of the sort common in early preserving books: it assumes you have already read the jelly chapter and know what a crock and a sieve are for. The points below fill in what it leaves out.
- "Proceed as with peach jelly"The method is not repeated here, and the earlier jelly recipe would have to be consulted for it. In this style of book it generally means setting the fruit in a covered crock in or over hot water and letting it heat gently until it collapses and releases its juice, rather than boiling it in added water. A stainless bowl over a pot of simmering water does the same thing.
- The hinge: no added waterEverything depends on the fruit being fully ripe and soft. Underripe plums will scorch before they give up any juice. If the fruit is not dripping ripe, this is the wrong recipe for it.
- Peeling plumsDip them in boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds and into cold water; the skins slip off as with peaches. The instruction to "remove seeds and skins" is redundant phrasing for the same two operations.
- "Two-thirds as much sugar as pulp"The original does not say whether this is by weight or by volume; if volume, roughly 2 cups sugar to 3 cups pulp. Either way it is a low-sugar preserve by period standards and will be softer and shorter-keeping than a one-to-one jam.
- Twenty minutes is a guide, not a ruleCook until a spoonful chilled on a cold saucer wrinkles when pushed, or until the mass reads about 220F. Wide pan, low heat, constant stirring: at this sugar level it catches easily.
- "The fruit juice may be added or not"The strained juice thins the marmalade and lengthens the cooking; hold it back for a stiffer set, or keep it separately and make jelly with it.
- CrocksPeriod crocks were earthenware or stoneware with various glazes, some of which contained lead. Use a modern glass or stainless bowl instead, and do not use an antique glazed crock for acidic fruit.
- Keeping itThe original says nothing about sealing. For shelf storage, follow a current tested water-bath procedure; otherwise refrigerate and use within a few weeks.
- YieldThe original gives no quantities. As a rough estimate, 3 lb of ripe plums will give something like 2 to 3 half-pint jars, depending on how much juice you return to the pan.
"Marmalade" comes from the Portuguese marmelada, a stiff quince paste (marmelo is quince), and for centuries in English it meant any thick fruit paste cut in slices, not the shredded-peel orange preserve it narrowed to in Britain. American preserving manuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries kept the older, looser sense: a marmalade was pulp cooked down with sugar, distinguished from jelly, which used strained juice only, and from jam, which kept the fruit in pieces. That is broadly the distinction being drawn here, which is why the recipe simply refers you back to the peach jelly method rather than repeating it.