Old Fashioned Plum Sauce

This is an old recipe from my fav online seedling store Awapuni Nurseries. Their team makes this sauce every year – pictured in the bottles at the back – tomato relish is in the jars at the front.

If you have a plum tree that’s fruiting, (unlike mine that decided not to this year, groan) this is a great way to use up all the plums that you can’t eat. Plum sauce is fantastic on just about everything in my opinion.

Because it’s old, the quantities aren’t in metrics! And it probably has more sugar than we like these days. We’ve kept the original recipe and added in the conversions for you. We suggest adjusting the sugar to suit your 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.