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Dessert

Preserved Plums

A preserve made by soaking and simmering small damsons with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Preserved Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Soak the plums in water for two days.

  2. Drain the plums.

  3. Boil the water.

  4. Skim the boiled water.

  5. Pour the boiled water over the plums again.

  6. Let the plums sit for another day or two.

Cook in syrup

  1. Simmer the plums gently until the syrup thickens.

  2. Clarify the syrup.

  3. Add the boiling hot plums to the syrup.

  4. Boil gently until the plums are cooked and the syrup is rich.

Pot and set

  1. Transfer the plums to pots or jars.

  2. Secure them the next day.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Damsons
Provide the fruit flesh and tart flavour that the preserve is built around.
Sugar
Thickens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit through its high concentration.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the syrup thickens. Vigorous boiling can break the fruit apart before the syrup concentrates. Gentle heat lets sugar dissolve and water evaporate slowly, so the fruit stays whole and the syrup becomes rich and thick.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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