The Most Kindely Way to Preserve Plums, Cherries, Gooseberries, &c.

The Most Kindely Way to Preserve Plums, Cherries, Gooseberries, &c. is a traditional English recipe from the Elizabethan period for a candy (sweet) of fruit dried in sugar that were dried before being coated in sugar and which were typically stored until the Christmas-time festival of Twelfth Night. The full recipe is presented here and I hope you enjoy this classic English version of: The Most Kindely Way to Preserve Plums, Cherries, Gooseberries, &c.

prep time

20 minutes

cook time

20 minutes

Total Time:

40 minutes

Additional Time:

(+2 hours drying

Makes:

2 jars

Rating:

Tags : Vegetarian RecipesBritish RecipesEnglish Recipes

The recipe presented here comes from Sir Hugh Plat's Delights for Ladies (1609)

THE MOST KINDELY WAY TO PRESERVE PLUMS, CHERRIES, GOOSEBERIES, &c.

You must first purchase some reasonable quanity of their owne juyce, with a gentle heat upon embers, in pewter dishes. dividing the juice still as it commeth in the strewing: then boile each fruit in his own juyce, with a convenient proportion of the best refined sugar.

Modern Redaction

These are traditional sugared plums, the 'sugarplums' of Christmas fare. Originally these were fruit preserved by boiling in sugar. Only later, in the Georgian and Victorian periods did sugarplums become blends of nuts and fruit bound with sugar and formed into ball or fruit shapes.

Ingredients:

500g to 1kg plums (Damsons would be traditional) or apricots, washed, halved and with stones removed
500g caster sugar per 500g fruit
200g caster sugar

Method:

Weigh the fruit and measure out 500g of sugar per 500g fruit. Place the fruit in a pan with about 100ml water and bring to a gentle simmer. Cook gently, covered, for about 15 minutes, or until the fruit release some of their liquid, but are not soft.

Remove the fruit from the pan then stir in the sugar you measured above. Heat gently until all the sugar has dissolved, then carefully add the fruit, scattering over more sugar until they are just barely covered.

Continue heating gently until all the sugar has a chance to dissolve naturally in the fruit juices. Every now and then scrape the sugar from the sides of the pan, and stir as gently as possible to prevent the base from burning (try to move the fruit as little as possible, to prevent them from burning).

As soon as all the sugar has dissolved, increase the heat a little and gently bring the mixture to a boil (do not boil too hard, or the fruit will disintegrate). Continue boiling gently for 1 minute then take off the heat. Use a slotted spoon to gently remove the fruit from the syrup and arrange in a large glass or ceramic bowl. Carefully pour over the syrup then set a plat on top so that the fruit remains submerged in the syrup.

Cover with a clean tea towel and set aside to infuse at room temperature for 3 days. After this time, remove the fruit then strain the syrup into a pan. Bring the liquid to a boil, then carefully place the fruit in the pan. Boil gently for 1 minute then take off the heat and repeat the soaking process. Repeat this boiling and soaking procedure 1 more time (so that the fruit will have sat in the syrup for a total of 9 days).

After the final soaking, remove the fruit from the dish, pour the syrup into a pan then add 200g more sugar. Bring to a boil, return the fruit to the pan and continue boiling until the syrup becomes thick. At this point carefully remove the plums, one by one, from the syrup then rinse any excess syrup from their surfaces under cool, gently running, water.

Arrange the plums on a wire rack then place in an oven at the lowest setting (a gas oven with just the pilot light on is ideal) and allow to dry for 2 hours. After this time turn over and dry for 2 hours more. Repeat this process until the plums are dry on the surface, but still feel very slightly tacky [drying times vary depending on the plum variety and can be anything from a few days up to a week; you can also dry for only an hour per day if you wish), sprinkle them all over with granulated sugar.

Store in an air-tight container. If the fruit are preserved when ripe, they will keep until Christmas (these sugared plums or 'sugarplums' were traditionally served on Twelfth Night and will last up to a year).

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