Plums, Preserved
INGREDIENTS.-To every lb. of fruit allow 2/6 lb. of loaf sugar; for the thin syrup, 1/4 lb. of sugar to each pint of water.
Select large ripe plums; slightly prick them, to prevent them from bursting, and simmer them very gently in a syrup made with the above proportion of sugar and water. Put them carefully into a pan, let the syrup cool, pour it over the plums and allow them to remain for two days. Having previously weighed the other sugar, dip the lumps quickly into water and put them into a preserving-pan with no more water than hangs about them; and boil the sugar to a syrup, carefully skimming it. Drain the plums from the first syrup; put them into the fresh syrup and simmer them very gently until they are clear: lift them out singly into pots, pour the syrup over and, when cold, cover down to exclude the air.
This preserve will remain good some time POOLOOT. if kept in a dry place, and makes a very nice addition to a dessert. The magnumbonum plums answer for this preserve better than any other kind of plum.
Greengages are also very delicious done in this manner.
TIME. hour to 20 minutes to simmer the plums in the first syrup; 20 minutes to 1/2 hour very gentle simmering in the second.
SEASONABLE from August to October.
This is a two-stage syrup preserve, closer to a whole candied fruit than to jam: the plums are held in a weak syrup for two days so the sugar draws in slowly, then finished in a strong one until translucent. The point of the method is whole, unburst fruit in clear syrup.
- The hinge: never let it boilThe hinge: never let the fruit boil -- Both stages of simmering the plums want a bare tremble, the surface barely moving. (The sugar for the second syrup is boiled on its own, before the fruit goes in.) A proper boil splits the skins and reduces the fruit to a heap of pulp, which defeats the whole exercise.
- Sugar quantitiesThe proportion of sugar to fruit is not legible as printed here; the fraction before "lb. of loaf sugar" has dropped out. Something between three-quarters of a pound and a full pound of sugar to each pound of fruit would suit a preserve of this type. The thin syrup for the first soak is clearly given as 1 lb sugar to 1 pint water.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was hard refined sugar broken from a cone, sold in lumps, which is why the recipe tells you to dip the lumps in water. Ordinary granulated or preserving sugar does the same job; simply moisten it with a little water in the pan.
- Preserving-panOriginally a wide unlined copper or brass pan. Use a wide, heavy stainless steel pan: width matters more than depth, because evaporation and gentle even heat are what you are after. Avoid aluminium with acid fruit.
- Pricking the fruitA few clean punctures with a darning needle or cocktail stick per plum, right through the skin. This lets syrup in and steam out, and is the difference between whole fruit and burst fruit.
- Magnum bonumA large cooking plum, grown in both white (yellow) and red forms, still cultivated but rarely on sale. Any firm, large, slightly underripe plum works: greengages as the recipe suggests, or Victoria, Marjorie's Seedling, or Italian prune plums. Fully soft dessert plums will collapse.
- TimingsThe figure for the first simmering has lost its fraction in this printing; what survives gives an upper limit of 20 minutes for the first stage, and the recipe gives 20 minutes to half an hour for the second. Treat both as very gentle simmering and judge by the fruit rather than the clock: the plums are done when they look clear, as the recipe says.
- Covering and keeping"Cover down to exclude the air" meant waxed paper or brandy paper and a tied cover. Use hot, sterilised jars, fill while the syrup is hot, seal, and store in a cool dark place; refrigerate once opened. Discard any jar showing mould rather than skimming it off.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity of fruit; two pounds of plums with their syrup will fill something over two 1 lb jars. Serve a few plums per person as part of a dessert course -- the original recommends it only as "a very nice addition to a dessert."
Preserving whole fruit in successive syrups is one of the oldest sugar techniques in the English kitchen: the slow, staged increase in sugar concentration draws water out of the fruit without shrivelling it, giving the clear, glassy look that period cooks called "candied" or "clear". Beeton's household books carry dozens of such recipes, and their insistence on named varieties, magnum bonum here, greengage as the elegant alternative, reflects a Victorian fruit-growing culture in which orchard and kitchen garden varieties were chosen for how they behaved in the preserving-pan. The seasonal note from August to October is the English plum harvest, and preserves of this kind were the way a household carried that short glut through to the winter dessert table.