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Plum Preserves
Allow equal weights sugar and plums; add sufficient water to the sugar to make a thick syrup, boil, skim, and pour over the sugar to make a thick syrup, boil, skim, and pour over the plums (previously washed, pricked and placed in a stone jar), and cover with a plate.
The next day drain off syrup, boil, skim, and pour in over plums; repeat this for three or four days, place plums and syrup in the preserving-kettle, and boil very slowly for half an hour. Put up in stone jars , cover with papers like jellies, or seal in cans.
Mrs. J. H. Shearer.
A slow steeping preserve rather than a quick jam: the fruit is bathed in hot syrup once a day for several days so it takes up sugar gradually and keeps its shape. Note that a line of type has been duplicated in the original — "add sufficient water to the sugar to make a thick syrup, boil, skim, and pour over" appears twice; read it once.
- The hinge: don't rush the steepingRepeated daily doses of hot syrup draw water out of the plums slowly and let sugar move in, which is what keeps the skins intact and the flesh translucent. Boiling whole plums hard in syrup from the start bursts them and gives you jam.
- Prick every plumTwo or three deep punctures with a needle or skewer let syrup in and steam out. Unpricked plums swell and split, and their skins toughen.
- Proportions and the waterEqual weights means weight, not volume: 2 lb sugar to 2 lb fruit, left whole and pricked as the recipe directs. "Sufficient water" is only as much as will dissolve the sugar and give a syrup thick enough to pour over the fruit and cover it.
- Stone jarA glazed stoneware crock. Any nonreactive vessel does — glass, ceramic, or stainless — but not bare aluminium or unlined copper, which will react with the fruit acid over four days of standing.
- Preserving-kettleA wide, heavy, shallow pan. Width matters more than depth: it gives evaporation surface so the syrup thickens in half an hour of gentle boiling without the fruit stewing to pulp.
- Which plumsSmall firm plums such as damsons and greengages suit this method left whole. Italian prune plums work well and halve cleanly; large juicy dessert plums collapse.
- Sealing: ignore the paper"Cover with papers like jellies" means a paper laid on the surface (in period practice often brandied) and a paper cover tied over the jar — it relies on the sugar and cool storage, and permits surface mould. Fill clean hot jars, leave 1/4 inch headspace, and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes; plums are acid enough for that method.
- YieldTwo pounds of plums with two pounds of sugar fills several half-pint jars, the exact number depending on how far the syrup is reduced.
The Dixie Cook-Book belongs to the family of large compiled American household manuals of the 1880s, in which recipes often carry a contributor's name — here Mrs. J. H. Shearer — though such books drew much of their material from earlier compiled manuals rather than from a single author. The method she describes is the old European technique for whole-fruit preserves, in which the fruit is steeped in successively richer syrup over several days instead of being boiled at once; it long predates commercial pectin and was the standard way to keep plums, cherries and quinces whole and glossy. Equal weights of sugar and fruit was the conventional preserving ratio, sugar being the preservative rather than a flavouring, and the cost of that much sugar is one reason preserves were treated as a store-cupboard luxury and typically given a section of their own. The instruction to cover with papers "like jellies" points to a pantry culture of cool cellars and frequent inspection — safe canning practice as we understand it only became widespread later.