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Plum Paste
Put into a preserving-pan some stoned plums with a little water and boil to a pulp, pass through a fine sieve, pressing gently into a pan and boil, stirring well until the contents become a thick pulp. Then weigh it, and to each pound use ten ounces of sugar; place the sugar in a preserving-pan, clarify and boil it to the feather; add the fruit pulp, and boil for about a minute longer, and, when done, pour onto a flat sheet of tin, spread it with a knife, and place it in a warm closet for a day. Shape the paste, and put into boxes or tins, with paper between each layer, when it will keep until wanted.
This is a fruit paste in the tradition of quince membrillo or French pâte de fruits — plum pulp cooked with sugar until stiff enough to slice. The hinge is the sugar stage: the paste sets because the syrup is boiled to roughly 232-234F before the fruit goes in, and everything after that is drying, not cooking.
- Boiled to the featherAn old sugar-boiling stage, about 232-234F on a thermometer — the syrup drips from a lifted skimmer in a thin trailing sheet. Slightly below the soft-ball stage; guess low rather than high, since a hot syrup plus a hot pulp will carry on thickening.
- Clarifying the sugarWith nineteenth-century loaf and raw sugars, clarifying meant dissolving in water with beaten egg white and skimming off the scum. Modern granulated sugar needs none of this; dissolve it in a little water and take it straight to temperature.
- Preserving-panA wide, shallow, unlined copper or heavy brass pan. Any wide heavy-bottomed stainless or enamelled pan works; the width matters more than the metal, since evaporation is the point. Avoid bare aluminium with acidic fruit.
- Sugar ratioTen ounces of sugar per pound of pulp is well under the usual jam proportion, which is why the paste depends on drying rather than sugar for its keeping. Weigh the pulp after it has thickened, not before.
- The warm closetA plate-warming cupboard or the space above a range, perhaps 100-140F. Use an oven set to its lowest temperature with the door ajar, or a dehydrator at 135F. A day is a minimum; the paste is ready when it is firm enough to cut cleanly and no longer tacky at the centre.
- The flat sheet of tinLine a rimmed baking sheet with parchment or a silicone mat and spread the paste something under half an inch thick; the thicker it is, the longer than a day it will need. Unlined metal will make it very hard to lift once set.
- StorageLayered between sheets of parchment in a tin, in a cool dry place, it keeps for weeks; because of the modest sugar, refrigerate it for longer storage and watch for surface mould in humid weather.
- YieldAbout 3 lb of ripe plums gives roughly a pound of pulp after sieving, which makes a single tray of paste, cut into small squares and served with cheese or as a sweetmeat.
Fruit pastes of this kind are among the oldest forms of preserving fruit in a European kitchen: cook the pulp down, add sugar, dry it until it can be cut, box it, and it lasts the winter. The technique long predates the sealed glass jar, and it survives in Spanish membrillo, Portuguese marmelada (from marmelo, quince — the ancestor of the word marmalade, when marmalade was still a sliceable paste rather than a spread), and the French pâtes de fruits of the confectioner's window. Its appearance in Oscar Tschirky's 1896 collection reflects how a large hotel kitchen of the period worked: sweetmeats, glacé fruits and petits fours were the business of the pastry and confectionery side of the house rather than the range, and a recipe like this belongs there. The instruction to boil sugar to the feather, and the direction to a 'warm closet', assume a reader who already knows what both mean.