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Dried Greengages
Select some perfectly sound greengages, cut off the brown end of the stalks but leave the remainder on; prick them all over with a pin, then put them in a pan with sufficient syrup of twenty-two degrees for them to float; set them over a smothered fire and leave for ten minutes. Turn the greengages and syrup into a large jar and cover them with vine leaves. On the following day strain off the syrup, boil up again, skim it and pour it back on the greengages. Repeat the operation of boiling for the two following days. Take the greengages out of the syrup and lay them a short distance from each other on a wire drainer placed on a baking-sheet; put them in a screen and dry them slowly. Boil a pound and a half of sugar to the pearl degree, squeeze in the juice of a lemon and work it against the sides of the pan with the bowl of a spoon until it has a dull white appearance, then throw in the dried greengages. Toss them about to give them a good coating, then lift them carefully out with a fork and place on the drainer, the stalk side upward. Dry the greengages slowly in a screen, then pack them away in boxes between layers of paper
This is a four-day candying process ending in a grained sugar coating, written in the vocabulary of a professional confectioner. Nothing here is difficult, but almost every measurement is given in a system no longer used.
- Syrup of twenty-two degreesThat is 22 degrees Baume on a syrup hydrometer, in the region of 40 percent sugar by weight, or roughly 1 lb of sugar dissolved in 1 pint of water. Make enough for the fruit to float freely; the recipe gives no fruit quantity.
- A smothered fireA banked coal fire giving steady, very gentle heat. The syrup should be kept well below a boil during the ten minutes with the fruit in it, so the skins do not split and the flesh does not collapse.
- The pearl degreeAround 220-222F on a candy thermometer, just past the thread stage. Working the hot syrup against the side of the pan with a spoon forces it to crystallise into the dull white, fondant-like coating that gives these their finish.
- Vine leavesFresh grape leaves, laid over the fruit; these were traditionally used in preserving to help hold the green colour.
- A screenA drying closet or cupboard with gentle warmth and moving air. A dehydrator at 130-135F or an oven on its lowest setting with the door propped is the equivalent; the fruit should firm and lose its surface wetness over several hours, not bake.
- GreengagesReine Claude plums, small, round and green-gold, in season for a few weeks in late summer. Any small, firm, sweet plum will take the same treatment, though it will not have the same honeyed flavour.
- Why prick the fruitThe pin holes let syrup enter and steam escape, so the plums candy through instead of bursting. Do it thoroughly, over the whole surface.
- Reboiling the syrupEach day's boiling drives off water and raises the sugar concentration, drawing more moisture from the fruit in stages. Skipping days or hurrying it shrivels and toughens the plums.
- StoragePacked dry between sheets of paper in a tin or airtight box, in a cool cupboard, they keep for months. Any tackiness means they went into the box before they were dry enough.
Greengages are the plum the French call Reine Claude, after Claude of France, queen to Francis I; the English name is generally traced to Sir William Gage, whose family is said to have grown the tree in Suffolk in the early eighteenth century after the labels on an imported batch were lost. Candying them whole, on the stalk, is a piece of classic French confectionery practice, the same slow ladder of sugar syrups used for glace cherries and marrons glaces, and it belongs to the pastry side of a large hotel kitchen rather than to home cooking. Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf from 1893 and published a cookbook in 1896. Recipes of this kind can be calibrated in degrees Baume with no fruit weight given at all, which tells you something about who was expected to be reading them.