Magnum Bonum Plums

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Ingredients 4 ingredients

Keep children and pets away from the hob and the oven, and keep oven gloves and a lid within reach.

Oven and hot trays. Use dry oven gloves for trays and dishes: a hot tray looks just like a cold one. Open the oven door away from your face and let the first rush of heat out.
Boiling water and steam. Turn pan handles inward, away from the edge of the hob. Lift lids away from you, and pour hot water away from your body: steam burns too.

Though very indifferent when eaten raw, this fruit makes an excellent sweetmeat, or is fine in the form of tarts.
Prick them with a needle to prevent bursting, simmer them very gently in a thin syrup, put them in a china bowl, and when cold pour the syrup over.
Let them lie three days, then make a syrup of three pounds of sugar to five pounds of fruit, with no more water than hangs to large lumps of the sugar dipped quickly, and instantly brought out.
Boil the plums in this fresh syrup, after draining the first from them.
Do them very gently till they are clear, and the syrup adheres to them.
Put them one by one into small pots, and pour the liquor over.
Reserve a little syrup in the pan for those intended to be dried, warm up the fruit in it, drain them out, and put them on plates to dry in a cool oven.
These plums are apt to ferment, if not boiled in two syrups;
the former will sweeten pies, but will have too much acid to keep.
A part may be reserved, with the addition of a little sugar, to do those that are dry, for they will not require to be so sweet as if kept wet, and will eat very nicely if boiled like the rest.
One parcel may be done after another, and save much sugar, but care must be taken not to break the fruit.