Home › Fruit Desserts › Green Gages Stewed
Green Gages Stewed
1 pound of green gages 6 ounces sugar 1/4 pint water Put the green gages in a stewpan, and pour over them sufficient water to cover them, and let them boil up quickly, and continue boiling for a minute. Now turn them carefully in a colander, and as soon as they are cool enough to touch, remove the skins; they will come off quite easily. Make a syrup with the sugar and water, but do not let it boil after the sugar is melted. As each green gage has the skin removed drop it into the syrup. Bring them to boiling point, but do not let them boil; they must simmer very gently for an hour. If they are carefully done they will be unbroken when they are cooked. All plums are much better by having the skins removed, as most of the acid which disagrees with many people is in the skins.
A simple compote whose only real difficulty is keeping the fruit whole. The heat control matters more than the timing.
- Never let the syrup boilOnce the plums go into the syrup, the surface should barely shiver. A rolling boil bursts the skinned fruit and you end up with sauce rather than whole gages, which is the entire point of the method.
- The 1/4 pint is ambiguousIn an American book that is 1/2 cup; in a British one, 5 fl oz. Either works, since the syrup only needs to come partway up the fruit and the plums release juice as they cook. Six ounces of sugar is about 7/8 cup.
- Two separate watersThe first boiling water is only for loosening skins and is drained away in the colander. The syrup is made fresh with the measured water and sugar.
- Blanch briefly, in batchesA minute at a rolling boil is enough to lift the skins. Crowding the pan drops the temperature and the skins cling; do a pound in two lots if the pan is small.
- An hour is longRipe greengages skinned and held just below a simmer are tender in 20 to 30 minutes. The full hour suits firm, barely ripe fruit and a stove that cannot be trusted to hold a low flame.
- Greengages, and substitutesGreengage is a small green-gold dessert plum (Reine Claude in France), sold briefly in late summer. Any small firm plum takes the same treatment, though red-skinned varieties lose their colour once peeled.
- On the acid claimThe note about acid living in the skins is period reasoning. Plum skins are tarter than the flesh, but the acid is not confined to them; peeling here is worth doing for texture rather than digestion.
- YieldA pound of fruit serves four as a dessert. Cool the plums in their syrup and serve chilled, with cream or a plain baked custard.
The greengage is generally traced to the Reine Claude plum of France, named for the queen consort of Francois I, and is said to have acquired its English name in the early eighteenth century from the Gage family of Suffolk, who grew it. It is prized as a dessert plum, for sweetness and a short season, which may be why the recipe treats it so gently: the aim is whole, glossy fruit in clear syrup, not jam.