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Greengage Preserve
Place the fruit in a wire basket, immerse the basket in boiling water, and when the skins loosen take them out of the water and peel them. Weigh the fruit and allow one pound of sugar for every pound of fruit. Place a layer of the fruit in a large earthen jar, sprinkle it with some of the sugar, then add another layer of fruit and sugar and when all is used set the jar aside until the next morning. In the morning draw off the juice that has formed. Boil it, skimming it as the scum rises. When the juice is quite clear add the fruit and cook it gently about half an hour, or until the greengages are clear and tender. Skim out the fruit, place it on a large platter, and boil the syrup until it is as thick as desired, draining into the kettle all that drains from the fruit on the platter. When thick enough return the fruit to the syrup, and when hot set away. re-
A straightforward equal-weight preserve that relies on an overnight maceration to draw juice before any heat is applied. The instructions assume a cook who knows what a set looks like; the notes below fill in the parts the original leaves unsaid.
- The hinge: cook the fruit gently, onceThe whole method exists to keep the greengages whole and translucent rather than reducing them to jam. The fruit goes into already-clarified boiling juice, simmers barely, and is lifted out while the syrup alone is boiled down hard. Rushing the syrup with the fruit still in it collapses the plums.
- GreengagesA green-gold dessert plum, sweet and low in acid compared with damsons. If none are available, any firm ripe plum works, though darker varieties will not give the pale amber preserve the recipe is aiming at. Fruit that is slightly underripe holds its shape best.
- Blanching to peelThe wire basket is a period sieve or frying basket; a strainer or spider does the same job. A brief dip in boiling water, only until the skins loosen as the recipe directs, then straight into cold water, keeps the flesh from cooking.
- The earthen jarAny large non-reactive bowl or crock will do for the overnight sugaring. Avoid bare aluminium or unlined copper, which react with fruit acid.
- Overnight macerationSugar draws juice out of the plums by osmosis; by morning there should be a good pool of syrup with the fruit sitting in it. Cover and keep it in a cool room or the refrigerator, not a warm kitchen, or it can begin to ferment.
- "As thick as desired"For a preserve that sets lightly, boil the syrup to about 220F (104C) at sea level, or until it sheets from a spoon. A whole-fruit syrup preserve of this kind will stay looser than a jam; that is normal for this style.
- "Set away" is not a sealing instructionThe recipe stops at returning the fruit to the hot syrup and says nothing about how to close or store the jars. Fill sterilised jars and process in a boiling-water canner according to current tested times, or treat the result as a refrigerator preserve and use it within a few weeks. Paraffin sealing, once common for preserves, is no longer considered safe.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity; it scales pound for pound, so the yield depends on how much fruit you start with and how far the syrup is reduced.
The greengage is a green-skinned plum long prized in European kitchens for its high sugar and delicate flavour; its English name is generally traced to the Gage family, who are said to have propagated the fruit in England in the eighteenth century, while the French call it reine-claude. A whole-fruit preserve like this one, where the plums are peeled and kept intact in a clear syrup, sits at the fancier end of the preserving repertoire: it is meant for the tea table or as a dessert sweetmeat rather than for spreading on bread. Its presence in The Butterick Cook Book, a volume issued by a pattern company for the American home, reflects how much of turn-of-the-century household work was seasonal preservation — a summer's worth of fruit converted, pound for pound with sugar, into shelf stock for the winter.