1. Plum jam

For ½ of bushel [bushel=120,6 litres] of plums without stones take ½ ounce [12.66 gram] of cloves, some cinnamon, and orange peel according to your preference. The plums must be cooked over a low heat, stirred constantly from below; when the jam starts to thicken, it needs even lower heat so that it does not burn. Cook it to desired density, put the jam in stone pots and put them in a warm stove [it may be an oven] to dry them out and put them in a dry place so that they do not mould. (Marya Śleżańska, Kucharz Wielkopolski…, 1892)

2. Plum jam

Plum jam is made on the last days of September or first days October, when prune plums are not only ripe, but also completely overripe because then they already have a lot of sugar, which completely replaces the need to add sugar. You can make plum jam from any kind of dark plum but the best one is from real prune plums. You can sort the plums by discarding the wormy parts because often one or two worms can be discarded, and the plum will still be good to use and by tearing each plum with your fingers, without using a knife, discard the stones. Put the sorted plums into a pot of the right size and cook them over a low fire, stirring with a wooden ladle to prevent them from burning. The plums will ooze so much juice in half an hour that they will become one thin light mass, i.e. a liquid that has to be cooked for so long while constantly stirring and keeping an eye on the burn until it turns dark, which will happen in 5 to 6 hours, although they will still be quite thin, as they will thicken only after being cooked again on the next day and then cooled down. Then, use a fine wire sieve and, taking little by little, strain through using a spoon. There should be nothing left on the sieve. If you have no wire sieve, sifts can be used. Many people cook plums with stones, which is completely wrong because the jam gets a stone taste, they break the sieves when being strained and a lot of jam remains on the stones. After pouring, put it back into a saucepan, adding, if you want to have a very exquisite jam, a pound of sugar on each pot, cook until the pieces of jam do not fall off a spoon, immediately put into a pot, stone one is a must, put it into a warm stove for the night.

(Lucyna Ćwierczakiewiczowa, Jedyne praktyczne przepisy kulinarne……., 1900)

3. Plum jam

The plums should be cut and the stones discarded; cook without water, over low heat, stirring continuously with a wooden spatula until the mass is ready, i.e. the pieces will fall off the spoon. The jam may or may not be strained, depending on the purpose for which it is intended; strained plums are more delicate. If they are to be strained, i.e. ground, boil the plums first and grind them through a sieve. (…) Boil the mash until it gets sufficiently thick; the mash will become darker by long cooking. If sugar needs to be added, the mass should be weighed after straining; a quarter of a pound of sugar is taken per pound [0.452 kg] of mass; if the fruit is sweeter, less sugar is needed; then boil the mass together with the sugar until it thickens. Put the jam in stone or earthenware pots and bake in the stove, preferably bread one, until it forms a skin on the top; this will keep it longer. When the jam has cooled down completely, you can pour tallow over it and tie it in a bladder or parchment paper and store it in a dry and cool place.

(Marta Norkowska, Najnowsza kuchnia…, 1904)

4. Plum jam

Wipe ripe prune plums off their colour, remove the stones from them, throw them into a whitewashed cauldron and cook over low heat while still stirring. When the jam is completely cooked, grind it through a wire sieve or a sift, on which only husks will remain. Scrub the cauldron, put in the ground jam, cook slowly, still stirring with a spatula, so that it does not stick to the bottom. The fire should be gradually getting weaker and weaker, and when the jam comes off from the cauldron, put it into stone jars and put it in a bread stove to form a hard crust on the top, which will protect it from mould. Once the jars have cooled down, tie them with a bladder and keep them dry.

(Antonina Dz., Tania kucharka…, 1906)

5. Plum jam

Plum jam is plum marmalade cooked without sugar. Ripe, even overripe prune plums are baked in pots or stewed in large saucepans. They are ground through a sieve, then the whole mash is put into cauldrons and cooked gently, stirred with a spatula from the bottom. When the mass stiffens, put it into stone pots and put it into a stove for a few more hours. You can use such jam for dumplings, sauces, etc. It is cheap but it is not as good as sugar marmalades in all respects.

(Elżbieta Kiewnarska, Konfitury, kompoty… 1927)

6. Plum jam

Take ripe plums, as much of them as you like; wipe them dry, cut each one for the extraction of the stone, put them in a pot or a well whitened cauldron and cook, stirring over very low heat; when they are cooked, grind them through a strainer or a wire sieve on which only the shells remain; wash well the pot or cauldron in which they have cooked, and put the mashed plums to the dry one, cook slowly, stirring constantly so that they do not burn on the bottom. If you want, you can add sugar or honey; cook it together in the oven, preferably after taking out the bread, and after it has cooled completely, tie it with a bladder and paper.

(Maria Marciszewska, Doskonała kuchnia, 1929)

7. Plum jam

Very ripe prune plums are used to make excellent jam in large quantities. The plums can even be wrinkled already, and if they are not ripe, you have to spread them out and wait for them to settle a little because they will be sweeter and have more juice, and they will mix sooner. Plum jam is made in large copper cauldrons. To avoid burning the mixture, you can grease the cauldron with good olive oil. A special spatula, slightly similar to a hoe or a mason’s trowel, is used for mixing. It is designed to make slaked lime, however, it is slightly rounded due to the shape of the cauldron. The fire under the cauldron may be strong at first but as the mass starts to thicken, it should be gentler and gentler so that the jam does not burn. As long as there is a fire under the cauldron, you cannot stop stirring even for a moment because it would be dangerous to leave the jam in a copper dish, it is essential to fry it continuously until the mass starts to come off the dish and does not fall off the spoon. While stirring you should constantly scrape off the parts that stick to the edges to stir them together. The jam can be ground through the sieve before the mass thickens too much and put it back into the cauldron until it is cooked properly. It is not advisable to cook and then grind the plums with stones, as they make this difficult and often damage the sieves. It is also difficult to grind all the flesh from the stones, with which a lot of pulp is usually still discarded. So, you do not waste time if you remove the stones before cooking and also check whether the plums are worm-like.

Cleanly washed plums are broken up with your fingers and thrown into the cooking pot after rejecting the stones. In order to let the juice ooze immediately and to protect the mass from scorching you should not pour all of them in at once. It is good to crush the first part strongly and only gradually add the rest of the plums. While cooking you can add various spices such as cinnamon, cloves, aniseed, coriander, all mashed, and thinly chopped lemon peel. For 12 kg of plums you take 12 dkg of cinnamon, 1 ½ dkg of cloves, 1 dkg of aniseed, 1 dkg of coriander and 1 lemon peel. Those who have nuts in the orchard can add 8 green nuts cooked and finely chopped. The finished plum jam should be put into stone vessels or wooden firkins and dried on top in a warm oven.

(Kazimiera Kulczycka, Największy zbiór przepisów…, 1930)

8. Plum jam

Only plums that are ripe are good for jam. They are so sweet that there is no need to add sugar. Remove the stones from the plums, boil them in a pot, then grind them through a sieve, put them in a saucepan, cook, stirring frequently until they thicken. The thicker the mass is, the more persistent the stirring is. When the jam is almost cooked, stir it continuously, so that it does not lose its nice colour, does not darken, and does not become smoky. When the jam thickens, put it in a stone jar, put it in the still hot oven after lunch to bake it. Making the jam in large quantities is done in the same way. The plums are usually cooked in cauldrons, in the orchard in the air, stirred with a spatula until they are properly cooked.

(Maria Disslowa, Elzbieta Kiewnarska, Jak gotować…, 1931)

9. Plum jam

Clean 25 kg of plums and remove their stalks and stones, then throw some of the plums into a cauldron, add some water and boil. When they ooze the juice – pour the rest of the plums – stirring constantly. Sweeten the ready jam, adding ½ kg of sugar, then boil several times with the sugar and pour it into a jar.

(“Pomeranian Agricultural Calendar”, 1937)

10. Plum jam

Break up cleanly washed plums with your fingers, discard the stones and throw them into a cauldron. In order to let the juice ooze immediately and to protect the mass from burning, you should not throw them all at once. It is good to crush the first part firmly and later throw in the rest of the plums. While cooking you can add various spices such as cinnamon, cloves, aniseed, coriander (all broken) and thinly chopped lemon peel. For 12 kg of plums, you take 12 dkg of cinnamon, 1,5 dkg of cloves, 1 dkg of aniseed, 1 dkg of coriander and 1 lemon peel. Those who have nuts in the orchard can add 8 green nuts cooked and finely chopped. The finished plum jam should be put into stone vessels or wooden firkins and dried on top in a warm oven.

(“Gospodyni Pomorska”, 1938)

11. Plum jam

Sort ripe plums, drill and put them into a saucepan with thick walls and initially under a cover and over low fire, evaporate the fruit, stirring with a scalded wooden spoon. When the plums have covered with juice, uncover the saucepan and start evaporating, heating for several minutes to 1 hour and set aside until the next day. Repeat this operation for 3-4 days. The mixture can be ground to remove the peels. It is assumed that if the jam has reached a weight of about 1 kg, and the mass is sticking out from the walls – it is ready. Put the hot jam into a hot twist-off jar or a stone pot. Close the jars, bake the jam in the pot in the oven and cover it with a ring of cellophane moistened with spirit.

(Zdzisława Skrodzka, Kompoty, marynaty, dżemy, 1981)

12. Sugar-free plum jam

Sort, wash, drain the plums and remove the stalks and stones. Put them in a large-diameter saucepan, cover the saucepan and put it in a hot oven so that the fruit can ooze the juice. When the plums have covered with juice, uncover them and cook over low heat for about 30 minutes, often stirring with a wooden spoon or spatula to the bottom of the pot so that they do not burn and splash during thickening. Leave the boiled fruit until the next day and cook over low heat again for about 30 minutes, stirring continuously. Repeat these steps for 3-4 days. Cook the jam until it is glassy and until it stands out from the saucepan and falls off with pieces from a spoon. Put the hot jam into twist-off jars, close the jars. The jam can also be put into stone pots. However, the pots have to be placed in the oven and baked to form a shell on top. Cover the pot with the jam with a ring of cellophane moistened with spirit and tie it with foil. Store them in a cool, dry, dark room.

(Bohdan Jacórzyński, Przetwory z warzyw i owoców…, 1982)

13. Prune plum jam

5 kg prune plums, 50 dkg of sugar

Wash the plums, drain, remove the stones, add water and boil. While cooking, stir several times so that they do not burn. The jam boils fastest in a low, wide pot. Place the pot with boiled plums in a preheated stove and keep it boiling slightly. From time to time, open the stove door, allowing the steam to escape and then stir with a wooden spoon. Cooking jam in the stove is very practical as it does not stick to the bottom. Mix thickened (up to half volume) jam with sugar, boil, put into stone pots and place in a preheated stove. Bake. When it has cooled down – wrap it in cellophane, fixing it with a rubber band or a string. You can also put it in jars and bake it.

(Zofia Zawistowska, Małgorzata Krzyżanowska,  Książka kucharska, 1989)

14. Plum jam

Wash, stone, boil five kg of plums with a minimum amount of water and boil in the stove (this avoids burning and splashing the jam). Boiling can be done intermittently for a few days until a thick, glassy and dark mass is obtained. The jam is basically prepared without sugar but whoever likes sweeter can add about ½ kg for 5 kg of plums. The jam is put into scalded pots or jars, the edges are wiped and the pots are placed in a warm stove to form a dried skin on the surface. The jam prepared in this way holds perfectly well throughout winter. The packaging is closed with caps, sealed with cellophane or parchment.

(Wera Sztabowa, Krupnioki i moczka…, 1990)

15. Plum jam (as at the Grandma’s)

5 kg plums, 1 kg sugar

We made the jam from plums that are fully ripe, sweet, slightly wrinkled at the base. Rinse the plums, clean them from their stalks, remove the stones and put them into a thick-bottomed saucepan. You can pour a few spoons of water on the bottom. Place it on a low fire; the plums will ooze the juice. Without taking them out of the fire and stirring from time to time with a wooden spoon, stew them (without covering) for 2-2.5 hours. When the mass is thick, i.e. sufficiently evaporated (i.e. the mass comes off the spoon), add sugar and fry all the time stirring, another 15 minutes. After that time, take the jam out of the fire, put it into scalded jars (leaving about 1 cm of free space from the top), and screw them on.

(Alina and Paulina Fedak, Owoce na każdą okazję, 1990)

16. Plum jam

Prune plum jam is the best because the fruit has a relatively high dry mass content and, in addition, its halves keep their form during cooking. Unlike other conserves, the jam needs plums that are fully ripe or even overripe and wrinkled because they contain the most sugar.

Wash carefully and cut the plums for the jam into halves with a stainless knife, discard the reddened fruit and remove the stones from the unreddened ones. Of course, you can also boil whole plums, such as Damascene, Lubaszka, Mirabelle, and when boiling, grind them through a not too thin sieve which will keep the stones. Then, however, we will not be able to reject the worm fruit.

Boil the plums over low heat, stirring frequently, until the mass decreases to 1/3 of the original volume. The mass, which is sufficiently thickened, should stick out from the walls of the pot and fall off the spoon, not in single drops, but in whole flaps. Then add sugar. For the jam, 25-30 dkg of sugar per kilogram of concentrated mass is enough. The addition of sugar thins down the jam, takes the rest of the water out of it, so we have to thicken it together with the sugar. The finished jam is usually placed in stone or glass jars and pots. It is good to bake the surface of the jam by placing an uncovered dish in a hot stove. This will protect the jam from mould. To the plum jam we can add apples or pears cut into quarters, peeled from the skin and without a core.

(Robert Miernik, 150 domowych przetworów…, 1991)

17. Plum jam

Rinse the plums, remove stalks, dry in the air, halve and throw away the stones and wormy plums. You can also boil the plums with stones and then grind them, but then you will not throw away the worm plums. Plums of such varieties where the stone does not stand out from the flesh must be cooked as the whole. Prepared plums are thrown into a large saucepan to let the juice ooze. They should be cooked over low heat and stirred so that they do not burn. Thicken the mass to one third of the initial amount, until the jam is so thick that it starts to stand out from the walls of the pot and falls down with whole flaps off the wooden spoon used for stirring. Adding sugar to the jam thins it down. So, if you add a little sugar, you must cook longer until you get the right density.

If you boil whole plums, you grind them through a sieve in the middle of the cooking and continue to thicken the jam. The finished jam is placed in stone jars, put in the stove and so that crust is formed on the top. Apples or pears cut into pieces can be added to the plum jam.

(Robert Miernik, 150 domowych przepisów…, 1991.)

18. Jam with fjut (sugar beet syrup)

The number of plums depends on the size of the baking pan. Wash the prune plums, remove stones, put them into a baking pan and put them in the stove. Cook, or actually bake them stirring from time to time. When the jam thickens, add fjut instead of sugar.

(Grażyna Szelągowska, Kuchnia z rodowodem, 2011)

19. Plum jam

Clean 15 kg of plums and remove stones. Boil them in a copper saucepan or an enamel pot and stir them with a long wooden spade until the mixture is thick enough. The fire should not be too strong, it should burn evenly, so that the fruit, constantly stirred, boils continuously. Then add 1 ½ kg of sugar, stir a few more times to dissolve and remove the saucepan from the fire. Mix with 2 gram of ground clove, 6 gram of ground cinnamon, then put it in clean and dry stone pots or jars so that the surfaces are completely smooth. After cooling down, place a piece of clean paper on the plums, moisten it with rum, arrack or pure spirit, then tie with parchment paper and store in a cool, airy place. You get about 5 kg of ready-made jam.

(E. Henneking, Książka kucharska D-ra Oetkera, year of publication not known)

20. Plum jam

The jam is made with plums that are very ripe, with wrinkled skin around their stalks. Washed plums should be halved and the stones should be removed. Heat the halves of the plums slowly, adding a minimum amount of water to the bottom of the container so that they do not burn during the initial heating. Cook the jam in a thick-bottomed, flat and wide pot. As the jam splashes, it must be stirred continuously. Finish the heating when there is about 1/3 of the weight of the fruit used. For example, of 10 kg of plums, there should be about 3-3.5 kg of jam. So, the plum jam is worthwhile mainly when there are many plums and they are cheap.

(Archive of the Ethnographic Museum in Toruń, excerpt from a newspaper)

21. Plum jam

The plums used for the jam are very ripe, with the highest sugar content. After washing, the stones must be separated from the plums. The plums are boiled to a pulp, but not ground, and then cooked until the jam is very thick. No sugar should be added to the jam prepared from very ripe plums. However, if they are too sour, at the end of evaporation you can add sugar in the amount of 10-15 dkg per 1 kg of jam. When sugar is added, the jam will become thinner and further cooking is necessary. The cooked jam is put into hot, washed and scalded stone pots. After cleaning the edges of the pot and smoothing the surface, the jam should be covered with a matching round piece of parchment and soaked in spirit. The jam must then be sealed by pouring pech [sealing wax] on it or by wrapping it in cellophane or parchment.

(Archive of the Ethnographic Museum in Toruń, newspaper clipping)