[Sca-cooks] Round one - Plum Butter
Susan Fox
selene at earthlink.net
Tue Sep 18 19:13:23 PDT 2007
My suggestion is NO WATER.
I use plum puree and sugar in equal amounts and it comes out lovely.
Occasionally a scant shake of ground cloves.
Selene
ranvaig at columbus.rr.com wrote:
> I started looking at this recipe from translating the word "Latwergen" which means a spiced fruit syrup or puree. The word is related to "electuary", a medicinal paste mixed with jam or syrup for oral consumption.
>
> Rumpolt calls this Plum Confect, but the recipe calls for cherries. It could be a typo, but I used plums, which were cheaper. Plums that you cook down and keep in a jar sounds like plum butter to me. I found a very similar modern recipe and changed the spices to the ones called in Rumpolt.
>
> The recipe is called a Confect, but the ones after is say "Du magst auch wohl ein solche Latwerge machen von Hollunderbeer" "You might also make such a Latwerge from elderberries", or from sloes, or apples.
>
> There is another reference to Latwergen in Von Spicen, that is a candy that you roll out and cut into pieces.
> http://www.advancenet.net/jscole/maidens.htm
>
>
> I cut the plums in half, removed the stone, and cooked the plums until soft. I thought the texture would be better without the skins, so I peeled them, processed in the food processor. There were still visible pieces of skin, so I ran it though a sieve. A food mill would be even better but it only took half an hour to peel and puree the plums. It looked pretty much like pink applesauce.
>
> So far so good. But I had added too much water, I was afraid it would boil off and burn, but I think it would have been fine. The puree tasted good but was very thin. And it filled the slow cooker to the top. I let it cook down until there was room to add the sugar and it was back to the top.
>
> It was still very thin. By now it had been cooking 24 hours, and tasted decidedly like prunes... not quite what I intended. And was still pretty thin.
>
> So it cooked some more, just an inch down from the top. Now it was still quite thin, but down right black... and tasted like burned prunes. Yechhh.
>
> I washed it down the drain and will try again tomorrow with a new batch of plums. I'm going to set up a steamer, I think, and no added water at all. And try a slow oven to reduce the puree. I don't think the slow cooker had enough surface area. I may even get a food mill, which is what this recipe really needs. Any other suggestions?
>
> Ranvaig
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