Wednesday 30th August 2006
This month’s recipe is a favourite of mine as it has a fresh, not too sweet taste owing to the addition of the oranges. I have made it with other plums but find Victoria plums the best.
As I was deciding which recipe to do for September it occurred to me that there must be a little story about why these particular plums were named Victoria. So I did some research.
The Encyclopedia Britannica writes that they were first mentioned in 1860 in R Hogg’s ‘Fruit Manual’ as being most prone to being attacked by silver leaf, but nothing else was said about them. I then rang up Kew Gardens, who told me that they didn’t deal in fruit trees and put me in touch with the Royal Horticultural Society. I couldn’t find anyone to deal with my query there – but a phone call to the London Library gave me the following information from a book by H. V. Taylor called ‘The Plums of England’. Apparently the first tree was a chance seedling grown in a garden in Alderton, Sussex. This was taken over and introduced by a nursery man called Denyer in a nursery in Brixton in 1840. It is thought that he named the plum after the young Queen Victoria –¸ but we have no confirmation of this and the author laments that there is so little documented about them.
So if anyone has any further knowledge of Victoria Plums, I, for one, would be extremely interested.
Ingredients
4lb Victoria plums
3 1⁄2 lb granulated sugar
4 oranges
1 pint water
Method
Wash and stone the plums and place in a large saucepan or jam making pan. Add the grated rind of the four oranges. Squeeze the juice and add to the plums with the water. Simmer until the plums are really tender and then add the sugar. Stir well until completely dissolved. Bring to a full rolling boil for about ten minutes. Test for setting by putting a little on a cold saucer and cooling it. Push with a finger and if it wrinkles, it is ready to pot up.