[Sca-cooks] Round one - Plum Butter
silverr0se at aol.com
silverr0se at aol.com
Wed Sep 19 09:07:53 PDT 2007
I agree with Selene - no water. Put the cut plums in a heavy pot, cover them with sugar and put on a VERY low heat. The juice from the plums will dissolve the sugar, then you can increase the heat. I leave the skins on during cooking for the color, then remove them later,?but I do not puree the fruit.
I think the "prune-y" taste developed from cooking it too long. I used the recipe from Eleanor Fettiplace's Receipt Book - since I don't have the timing memorized, you might want to check in there.
If the jam doesn't work, check out the Florileium article I wrote on making Sugar Plums.
Good luck!
Renata
-----Original Message-----
From: Susan Fox <selene at earthlink.net>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Sent: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 7:13 pm
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Round one - Plum Butter
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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