Old Fashioned Plum Sauce

I love this recipe from one of my favourite online seedling stores, Awapuni Nurseries. It’s a sauce their team makes every year - the plum sauce bottles are the ones you see at the back - with tomato relish sitting in the jars at the front of the photo.

If you’re lucky enough to have a plum tree producing more fruit than you can possibly eat, this is such a good way to use them up. This plum sauce is incredibly versatile and delicious on just about everything - it never lasts long in our house.

As with many older recipes, the original measurements aren’t in metric, and the sugar content is a little higher than most of us prefer these days. I’ve kept the recipe true to the original but added metric conversions for ease. I also tend to reduce the sugar, so feel free to adjust it to suit your own taste.

Old Fashioned Plum Sauce

6lbs (2.7kg) plums

3 pints (1.4L) malt vinegar

2lbs (0.9kg) brown sugar

2 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp ground mace

1 tsp cayenne

2 tsp ground ginger

2 oz (56gm) garlic

2 tsp salt, black pepper

Method

Remove stones from the plums then put all the ingredients in a large pot and boil together until the mixture is reduced to pulp. This will take about two hours. Then, when it's cool, put it in the whizz or use a hand whizz. Lastly, put in sterilised bottles.

Go here for tips on how to sterilise your jars or bottles.