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Plum Preserve
Select small purple plums, and be sure they are sound and not too ripe. Remove the stems, wash the fruit, and pierce each plum with a steel fork. Put into the kettle a cup of water to every six pounds of fruit, and allow a pound of sugar for every pound of fruit. Place plums and sugar in the kettle as previously directed, and boil slowly. The fruit must be closely watched, as it is apt to go to pieces in boiling. After it has boiled a short time, remove it from the kettle, and boil down the syrup. Plum preserve may be safely kept in a stone jar. Four quarts of plums will make three quart jars of preserve.
A straightforward pound-for-pound preserve, but the original leans on conventions the book explains elsewhere and on storage practice no longer considered sound.
- The hinge: pierce every plumPiercing the skin lets syrup in and steam out, so the fruit takes up sugar instead of bursting. Skip it and the plums split, collapse, and turn the batch into jam.
- "Small purple plums"Damsons or Italian prune plums are the likely candidates; Italian prunes are freestone, damsons cling. Fruit that is not too ripe is called for deliberately: it carries more pectin and holds its shape.
- "As previously directed"Refers back to the book's earlier preserving instructions, which are not reproduced on this page. The usual contemporary method was to layer fruit and sugar and let them stand until the sugar drew out juice; that standing period is what keeps the syrup from scorching before the fruit gives up liquid.
- ProportionsA cup of water per 6 lb of fruit, and sugar equal to the fruit by weight. Four quarts of plums is roughly 6 lb, so about 6 lb of sugar total for the yield given. Do not cut the sugar; it is the preservative here, not just the sweetener.
- The kettleUse a wide, heavy nonreactive pan such as stainless steel. A broad surface lets the syrup reduce quickly, which matters because the two-stage method depends on getting the fruit out before it disintegrates.
- Boiling down the syrupAfter the plums are lifted out, reduce the syrup until it reaches about 220F, or sheets off a cold spoon, then return the fruit briefly and pack hot. Timing is left vague in the original because it depends entirely on pan width and fruit juiciness.
- StorageA stone jar with a paper or wax cover was standard in 1911 and is not adequate now. Fill hot sterilised jars, seal, and process in a boiling-water bath for 10 minutes, or keep the jars refrigerated and eat within a couple of months.
- YieldThree quart jars, as stated. Quart jars of preserve are unwieldy for a modern household; pints or half-pints from the same batch behave identically.
Plums were the workhorse of the late-summer preserving kettle: they arrive in quantity, they are naturally high in both acid and pectin, and unlike berries they hold together in syrup if handled carefully. The pound-for-pound sugar ratio here is characteristic of a preserve, though it was used for jams as well; what marks a preserve out is the aim of whole or large pieces of fruit suspended in a heavy syrup rather than a homogeneous spread. The Butterick Cook Book appeared in 1911, when a household still put up fruit by the peck and the distinction between a "preserve", a "conserve", a "marmalade" and a "jam" was a matter of technique. The casual note that it "may be safely kept in a stone jar" reflects a period when glazed earthenware crocks under a paper cover were normal storage; sugar at this concentration does most of the preserving work, which is why the instruction could be given so confidently.