Greengage Jam
INGREDIENTS. - To every lb. of fruit, weighed before being stoned, allow 1/4 lb. of lump sugar. AVERAGE Cost, 6d. to 8d. per lb. pot.
Divide the greengages, take out the stones, and put them into a preserving- GREENGAGES.
GREENGAGES, TO PRESERVE. jam is done, boil it rapidly for 5 minutes.
To ascertain when it is sufficiently boiled, pour a little on a plate, and if the syrup thickens and appears firm, it is done.
Have ready half the kernels blanched; put them into the jam, give them one boil, and pour the preserve into pots.
When cold, cover down with oiled papers, and over these, tissue paper brushed over on both sides with the white of an egg.
TIME.- hour after the sugar is added.
SEASONABLE. - Make this in August or September.
Greengages, Compôte of.- INGREDIENTS for dish for 5 or 6 persons.- 1 pint of syrup, 1 quart of greengages.
AVERAGE COST, 1s.
Make a syrup, skim it well, and put in the greengages when the syrup is boiling, having previously removed the stalks and stones from the fruit. Boil gently for hour, or until the fruit is tender, but take care not to let it break, as the appearance of the dish would be spoiled were the fruit reduced to a pulp. Take the greengages carefully out, place them on a glass dish, boil the syrup for another 5 minutes, let it cool a little, pour over the fruit, and when cold it will be ready for use.
TIME. hour to simmer the fruit, 5 minutes the syrup.
SEASONABLE in July, August and September.
Greengages, To Preserve and Dry. INGREDIENTS.-To every lb. of sugar allow 1 lb. of fruit, pint of water.
For this purpose the fruit must be used before it is quite ripe, and part of the stalk must be left on. Weigh the fruit. rejecting all that is in the least degree blemished, and put it into a lined saucepan with the sugar and water, which should have been previously boiled together to a rich syrup. Boil the fruit in this for 10 minutes, remove it from the fire and drain the greengages. The next day boil up the syrup and put in the fruit again, and let it simmer for 3 minutes, and drain the syrup away. Continue this process for 5 or 6 days, and the last time place the greengages when drained on a hair sieve, and put them in a oven or warm spot to dry; keep them in a box, with paper between each layer, in a place free from damp.
TIME. -10 minutes the first time of boiling. pan. Bring the fruit to a boil, then add the sugar, and keep stirring it over a gentle fire until it is melted. Remove all the scum as it rises, and just before the ! September. SEASONABLE. - Make this in August or GREENGAGES, PRESERVED.
Greengages, Preserved in Syrup. INGREDIENTS. - Allow 1 lb. of fruit to a 1 lb. pot, to every lb. of fruit allow 1 lb. of loaf sugar, 1/4 pint of water. AVERAGE Cosr, 6d. to 8d. per lb. pot.
Boil the sugar and water together for about 10 minutes; divide the greengages, take out the stones, put the fruit into the syrup, and let it simmer gently until nearly tender. Take it off the fire, put it into a large pan, and the next day boil it up again for about 10 minutes with the kernels from the stones, which should be blanched. Put the fruit carefully into jars, pour over it the syrup, and when cold, cover down, so that the air is quite excluded. Let the syrup be well skimmed both the first and second day of boiling, otherwise it will not be clear.
TIME.-10 minutes to boil the syrup; 1/1 hour to simmer the fruit the first day, 10 minutes the second day.
SEASONABLE.- Make this in August or September.
Four greengage preserves have been run together here by the scanner, and most of the fractions have dropped out of the text along with a stray heading for roast grouse. The proportions below are the ones Beeton uses elsewhere, but where the original number is genuinely lost it is flagged as such.
- The missing fractionsThe jam reads "to every lb. of fruit... allow lb. of lump sugar" — the numerator is gone. Beeton's greengage jam is usually given as three-quarters of a pound of sugar to a pound of stoned fruit, and that ratio sets well with greengages, which are acid and pectin-rich; note that the syrup recipe further down this same page calls for a full pound. The "To Preserve and Dry" recipe is likewise missing its water quantity; a quarter pint (5 fl oz) to each pound of sugar matches the syrup recipe below it.
- Leave out the kernelsTwo of these recipes have you blanch the stone kernels and boil them into the preserve. Greengage kernels, like those of all plums, apricots and peaches, contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the kernel is crushed or chewed. The Victorians used them for their almond flavour; there is no reason to now. Omit them, or add a drop of almond extract.
- Testing the setThe plate test in the original works, but chill the plate first and push the cooled blob with a finger — if it wrinkles, it is done. On a thermometer that is 220F/105C. Greengages set quickly, and the "boil it rapidly for 5 minutes" at the end is the stage that does the work.
- Preserving-panA wide, shallow, unlined copper or heavy stainless pan. Width matters more than capacity: evaporation is what thickens the jam, and a tall narrow pot makes you boil far longer and dull the colour. Fill it no more than a third full.
- SealingOiled paper under egg-white-glazed tissue was a dust seal, not a sterile one, and it relied on a very high sugar concentration and a cool larder. Use hot sterilised jars with two-piece or lug lids, filled to a quarter-inch of the top; refrigerate after opening.
- Preserved in syrup keeps less wellThe syrup-preserved fruit is whole fruit standing in syrup rather than a boiled-to-set jam, and "cover down, so that the air is quite excluded" is not a heat process. Treat it as a refrigerator preserve to be eaten within a few weeks unless you water-bath process it by a current tested schedule.
- Drying the fruit"A warm spot" would have meant a cooling oven or some similarly gentle heat. A dehydrator at 135F, or an oven at its lowest setting with the door propped, does the same in 8-12 hours. The fruit should be leathery and no longer tacky before it goes into the box between papers.
- Yield and seasonA pound of stoned fruit with its sugar makes roughly a pound and a half of jam, about one and a half standard jars. English greengages are a short August-into-September crop; imported Reine Claude plums appear at other times and behave the same, though slightly riper fruit gives a softer set.
- The compote"1 pint of syrup" means a plain sugar syrup, about 8 oz sugar dissolved in a pint of water and skimmed. The instruction not to let the fruit break is the whole point of the dish — poach at a bare tremble, and lift the gages out with a slotted spoon the moment they yield to a skewer.
The greengage is a plum, Prunus domestica subsp. italica, and its English name is generally traced to Sir William Gage, whose family imported plum trees from France in the early eighteenth century; the story goes that the labels were lost and the surviving green variety took the family's name. The French call the same fruit reine-claude, after Claude of France, queen to Francois I, which points to its much older cultivation there. Beeton's book gives it four separate treatments — jam, compote, preserved in syrup, and preserved and dried — because a Victorian household met a glut all at once from one or two garden trees and had to convert it into forms that would last the winter. The dried version, boiled in syrup and drained again over five or six days, is a domestic version of the confectioner's candied fruit sold at far higher prices, and the page quotes average costs in old pence per pound pot.