Cut your plums in half (they must not be quite ripe), and take out the stones. Weigh the plums, and allow a pound of loaf sugar to a pound of fruit. Crack the stones, take out the kernels, and break them in pieces. Boil the plums and kernels very slowly for about fifteen minutes, in as little water as possible. Then spread them on a large dish to cool, and strain the liquor. Next day add your syrup, and boil for fifteen minutes. Put into jars, pour the juice over when warm, and tie up with bladder when cold, with paper dipped in brandy over the preserve.
1639. Preserved Plums (2)
Another Way.—Plums for common use are very good done in treacle. Put your plums into an earthen vessel that holds a gallon, having first slit each plum with a knife. To three quarts of plums put a pint of treacle. Cover them over, and set them on hot coals in the chimney corner. Let them stew for twelve hours or more, occasionally stirring, and next day put them up in jars. Done in this manner, they will keep till the next spring.
1640. To Preserve Lemons, Whole, for Dessert
Take six fine, fresh, well-shaped lemons, cut a hole just round the stalk, and with a marrow-spoon scoop out the pips, and press out the juice, but leave the pulp in the lemons. Put them into a bowl with two or three quarts of spring water, to steep out the bitterness. Leave them three days, changing the water each day; or only two days if you wish them to be very bitter. Strain the juice as soon as squeezed out, boil it with one pound of loaf sugar (setting the jar into which it was strained in a pan of boiling water fifteen or twenty minutes); tie it up,
quite hot
, with bladder, and set by till wanted. Taste the water the lemons are lying in at the end of the third day; if not bitter, lift the lemons out into a china-lined pan, pour the water through a strainer upon them, boil gently one or two hours; set by in a pan. Boil again next day, until so tender that the head of a large needle will easily pierce the rind. Put in one pound of loaf sugar, make it just boil, and leave to cool. Next day boil the syrup, and pour it on the lemons; add one pound of sugar, and hot water to supply what was boiled away. Lift out the lemons, and boil the syrup and pour on them again every day for a fortnight, then every three or four days, adding gradually three pounds of sugar. When the lemons look clear and bright, boil the syrup pretty hard, add the lemon juice which had been set by, just boil, skim; put the lemons into jars, pour the syrup upon them, and tie up the jars
instantly