Plums.

A whistle-stop tour through some of my favourite Kentish plum varieties from my beloved Victoria, to little Greengages and foraged damsons.

Welcome to ingredient, where once a month I take a deep dive into some of my favourite seasonal and store cupboard ingredients. This month I’m focusing on plums: a mixed bag, focusing on the varieties grown here in Kent, the Garden of England where come late summer at road-side fruit stalls and farm shops fill up with punnets of round, plump plums, replacing the hitherto ubiquitous brown paper bags of local cherries.

For paid subscribers click here for my recipes for my Greengage Cake with Almonds, Plum & Tomato Salad with Seaweed and Sesame, and Damson Baked Chicken.

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I wrote this newsletter yesterday morning and it makes me smile, coming to edit it and send it off to you all today how very British it is. Because to be British means the same as it did yesterday, even though someone who has been a constant in almost all our lives has now gone. We now have a King; the money we use to pay for the paper, the stamps on our envelopes, the names of public bodies and on public buildings, everything is going to change whilst all the while remaining the same, and you and I will be long gone before future generations stand to sing ‘God Save The Queen’ once more. So I’m glad today we’re talking about the humble Kentish, English, British, whatever you wish to call it plum.

For years, the plums I gorged on every summer came from the Victoria Plum tree that stood by the front gate, slightly crooked in the trunk from where my grandmother reversed her car into it (apparently it was my mothers fault because she was thinking about her at the time!) and held together with white wrapped electrical wires; my Dad is a retired builder specialising in electrics, so it must have seemed as the only logical thing on hand at the time. We used to stand on the roof of his truck to reach the highest branches of the tree, passing the fruit down to each other ready to either bake into my mother’s delicious plum crumble, or else to gorge on sitting at the kitchen table.

Whilst Opal plums taste similar, nothing will ever oust the Victoria plum from the top spot in my heart, and I can always be expected to buy some locally whenever I see them on sale. If I close my eyes it does not take much effort to transport myself to a spot standing under the branches of that tree, one of my grandmothers favoured plastic mixing bowls in hand overflowing with dusky pink purple Victoria plums, raising the bowl to inhale the sweet, but not cloying scent. The wasps also loved that tree, so before you were able to bite into the impossibly sweet and juicy fruit (no other Victoria plums since have really compared) you had to check each one to make sure a stripy little someone had not beaten you to it and burrowed inside.

Facebook’s ‘on this day’ memories told me I was picking plums from the tree yesterday, 9 years ago in our battered old family trug.

I had originally planned to just focus on the varieties of plum that automatically spring to mind when ‘plums’ appear on the shopping list, but other varieties that go by other names have been doing their best to grab my attention this seasons, so think of this edition of ingredient as a love letter to a few varieties of English plum you should branch out into, before circling back to the classics.

Kent plums for sale at Macknade where I’m the resident recipe developer. For some reason Greengages are always marked as such, but often other eating plums are just marked ‘plums’ and what variety you get depends on what is good or abundant.

Greengages

As I’ve already mentioned, I live in Kent. I was born here, and whilst I’ve bounced around London, Los Angeles, France, I’m still here and especially now I live a little further from my childhood home, on the edge of the Romney Marsh (famous for delicious lamb) and into the Weald (think any historical novel set in the depths of the Kent countryside) I’m used to seeing signs for ‘Greengages’ or more commonly just ‘Gages’ either outside farm shops or domestic gardens for sale.

These little, slightly smaller than average green plums are abundant, and have a wonderfully gentle hue, and are a very common plum these days for cooking with; their yellow flesh sometimes coming out a little bitter and just crying out for sugar. However, this year every punnet of them I’ve enjoyed have been honey sweet, how gages should be, taking their place once more as the Queen of dessert plums. I’ve read they used to be a lot sweeter than I became used to in childhood, so more like this years harvest. So, whilst I’ve been snacking on most of them straight out of the fridge, they’ve been my baking plum of choice this year. Okay, so they won’t look as dramatic in cakes or muffins as their purple-skinned brethren, but their flavour, especially paired with a little it-is-almost-or-is-it-already-autumn cinnamon, has been unsurpassable.

I did worry, closeted here in Kent that I’d be sharing a plum with you all that might be harder to find elsewhere, but after seeing them stacked up for sale at Newcastle’s Grainger Market last week, I’m confident that they’re being enjoyed up and down the country.

Damsons

We had a very small, very young damson tree planted at our old home, the one with the Victoria plum tree, so naturally along with the sloes¹ my father taught me to pick and prick from the hedgerow in the back field behind the house, they were one of the first things I started to turn into gin.

And for years I did just that, I only made damson gin. It is a family joke I’ll infuse any wild or foraged fruit into gin (or more lately brandy) given half the chance. Mostly it was a matter of supply; damsons, like sloes if you don’t have a tree in the garden need to be foraged for, and my parents moved house. But also, you can’t just eat damsons as is; they’re incredibly bitter, and the stone is very hard to get out (I only find it worth it if I’m making a batch of jewel-like damson jam) so what to do with them?

Then, once I’d moved back from London and into my own little cottage Kevin, my parents gardener started turning up with damsons. Buckets of them. He’s my usual sloe ‘supplier’ from his hedgerows at home (around me, all the spots I found in the pandemic now get stripped every year, an irresponsible practice: when foraging, you should not only leave not just enough for the next person (to be polite), but enough to feed local wildlife, who rely on the berries you’re planning on turning into booze for food as part of the local ecosystem) but I have to request those by weight; he turns up at my parents back door with buckets of damsons that take us into true glut territory the moment we respond ‘yes please!’ to a ‘would you like some?’ text.

Of course when these gluts started, I made gin. Plenty of gin, and then both in my kitchen and my parents one jam was mastered, and my parents, who show that turning foraged and home grown things into alcohol runs in the family crack out the demi-john they use to make rhubarb wine (from the crown that has moved house with them three times - usually it makes for an unusual and delicious aperitif, but a good batch can rival a crisp bottle of rose) for damson wine: sweet, deep and dusky. If you’re as handy with the craft as they are (I plan to learn, one day) it is well worth the craft.

I arrived back from Newcastle to find my parents had deposited several kilos of Kevin’s damsons in my fridge, which really plays in, along with how disappointing some of the other Kent plums have been this year, to why I’ve deviated into other plum varieties this month. The gin is set in a jar in the (empty) fireplace in the living room to infuse, I’ll be restocking my jam shelf this weekend, but what next? J was not a massive fan of the damson crumble with a cookie dough lid I made the last time I had an excess of damsons (hat tip to Nigel Slater’s Greenfeast: Spring, Summer, affiliate link) so what next? I think a cordial might be nice, or some sort of sorbet, but do any of you have any more damson-based suggestions?

Another unknown variety plus more greengages at a typical roadside fruit stall.

Kentish Plums

I don’t even know where to start with the broad variety of ‘general’ plums grown in orchards and back gardens in this part of the world. As I mentioned, Victoria plums are one of the most common, a variety with a red-orange-purple hued skin, and if you get a good one, mouthwatering flesh. Named after Queen Victoria, they’re well suited for both eating and cooking, and abundant, even if the variety is highly susceptible to disease. They’re coming to the end about now, as we move onto darker skinned, yellower fleshed varieties. Avalon plums look very similar, but I don’t think they quite have the same flavour.

Opal plums, which are a quite similar dessert plum are red skinned, and also both very common, and very versatile. They’re hardier too, so becoming increasingly common. As I mentioned, their flesh tends to be a bit yellower than the Victoria, but they’re nothing like the plums you’d buy in the supermarket (though, I’d never buy my plums from the supermarket, they’re never ripe, or perfumed, or satisfying enough). Whilst for me, Victorias are the prize, I’ll still stop when a road sign advertises Opal plums for sale.

Later, orchards will grow varieties like Purple Pershore (exactly what you’d expect), the bright yellow Mirabelle de Nancy, and Blue Tit plums (the supermarket style-plums, with purple skin and yellow flesh), but as all these travel so much better than a Victoria or an Opal (both of which bruise easily, and both of which you have little to no hope of ripening in the bowl if you pick them too early) they don’t usually appear in farm shops or by the side of the road, being sent off elsewhere instead.

Turning to this months recipes, as you’ve probably already guessed I’ve chosen something for each plum. Keeping things traditional for the humble little greengage I’ve gone for a simple Greengage Cake with Almonds, a simple, early autumn cake that is as good to enjoy a slither with a cup of tea as it is as a slightly larger slice, served for dessert alongside a generous dollop of your best creme fraiche.

Moving onto a recipe for your average eating plum, my Tomato & Plum Salad with Nori and Sesame is something of the unexpected. It is deeply savoury but with a background sweetness from Victoria plum slithers; if you’ve not tried them in a salad before, you’re seriously missing out. They don’t stand out as a star, pushing all other ingredients behind them on the stage as mere supporting acts, but once you’ve tasted the plum slices paired with ripe, end-of-season tomato chunks and punchy Asian flavours, you realise the salad will fall flat without it. One of my favourite lunches for right now.

Finally my Baked Damson Chicken. Yes, just a version of my favourite skin on, bone in chicken thighs with some sort of fruit method (think peaches, apples and prunes, or apricots with ginger, I plan to have a fig and Masala version online too next week) but the damsons here - with a little maple syrup and a syrupy balsamic vinegar here instead of their usual partner of sugar - create an elegant, adult supper that balances a good amount of damson’s natural bitterness alongside the sweeter, fruitier elements.

1. I was heartbroken for my American friends when I discovered that your hedgerows don’t become heavy with sloes every autumn, a intensely bitter, small, hard, and dusky blue-purple berry which, if you pierce them with a pin and leave them to infuse with plenty of sugar in a vat of gin, vodka or brandy, makes for the most delightful autumn / winter tipple.