Ingredients.—½ lb. of good short crust, 1½ pint of plums, 1 lb. of moist sugar. Mode.—Line the edges of a deep tart-dish with crust; fill the dish with plums, and place a small cup or jar, upside down, in the midst of them. Put in the sugar, cover the pie with crust, ornament the edges, and bake in a good oven from ½ to ¾ hour. When puff-crust is preferred to short crust, use that made by the given recipe, and glaze the top by brushing it over with the white of an egg beaten to a stiff froth with a knife; sprinkle over a little sifted sugar, and put the pie in the oven to set the glaze. Time.—½ to ¾ hour. Average cost, 1s. Sufficient for 5 or 6 persons. Seasonable, with various kinds of plums, from the beginning of August to the beginning of October.
PLUM TART.
PLUMS, French, Stewed (a Dessert dish).
Ingredients.—1½ lb. of French plums, ¾ pint of syrup, 1 glass of port wine, the rind and juice of 1 lemon. Mode.—Stew the plums gently in water for 1 hour; strain the water, and with it make the syrup. When it is clear, put in the plums with the port wine, lemon-juice, and rind, and simmer very gently for 1½ hour. Arrange the plums on a glass dish, take out the lemon-rind, pour the syrup over the plums, and, when cold, they will be ready for table. A little allspice stewed with the fruit is by many persons considered an improvement. Time.—1 hour to stew the plums in water, 1½ hour in the syrup. Average cost, plums sufficiently good for stewing, 1s. per lb. Sufficient for 7 or 8 persons. Seasonable in winter.
PLUMS (Preserved).
Ingredients.—To every lb. of fruit allow ¾ lb. of loaf sugar; for the thin syrup, ¼ lb. of sugar to each pint of water. Mode.—Select large ripe plums; slightly prick them, to prevent them from bursting, and simmer them very gently in a syrup made with the above proportion of sugar and water. Put them carefully into a pan, let the syrup cool, pour it over the plums, and allow them to remain for two days. Having previously weighed the other sugar, dip the lumps quickly into water, and put them into a preserving-pan with no more water than hangs about them; and boil the sugar to a syrup, carefully skimming it. Drain the plums from the first syrup; put them into the fresh syrup, and simmer them very gently until they are clear; lift them out singly into pots, pour the syrup over, and, when cold, cover down to exclude the air. This preserve will remain good some time, if kept in a dry place, and makes a very nice addition to a dessert. The magnum-bonum plums answer for this preserve better than any other kind of plum. Greengages are also very delicious done in this manner. Time.—¼ hour to 20 minutes to simmer the plums in the first syrup; 20 minutes to ½ hour very gentle simmering in the second. Seasonable from August to October.
PLUMS, to Preserve Dry.
Ingredients.—To every lb. of sugar allow ¼ pint of water. Mode.—Gather the plums when they are full grown and just turning colour; prick them, put them into a saucepan of cold water, and set them on the fire until the water is on the point of boiling. Then take them out, drain them, and boil them gently in syrup made with the above proportion of sugar and water; and if the plums shrink, and will not take the sugar, prick them as they lie in the pan; give them another boil, skim, and set them by. The next day add some more sugar, boiled almost to candy, to the fruit and syrup; put all together into a wide-mouthed jar, and place them in a cool oven for 2 nights; then drain the plums from the syrup, sprinkle a little powdered sugar over, and dry them in a cool oven. Time.—15 to 20 minutes to boil the plums in the syrup. Seasonable from August to October.