Plum Preserves
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Prick the fruit and place it in a preserving kettle. Cover generously with cold water.
Heat to boiling and boil gently for five minutes. Drain well.
Make the syrup and cook
In the preserving kettle, combine sugar and water. Stir over heat until the sugar dissolves.
Boil for five minutes, skimming well.
Add the drained green-gages to the syrup and cook gently for twenty minutes.
Jar
Transfer to sterilized jars.
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
- Green-gages
- Provide the fruit that gives the preserves their body, flavour and tender texture.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, helps preserve it and thicken the syrup.
The step that matters
Cook the fruit gently in the syrup. Gentle simmering lets the green-gages soften while keeping their skins intact. Vigorous boiling bursts the skins and breaks the fruit down into a mush, and the sugar syrup needs time to penetrate the flesh evenly.
“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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