Produce

Plums

Hundreds of plum varieties exist worldwide, ranging from small, tart Damson plums used mainly for jam to large, sweet Japanese varieties eaten fresh out of hand.

A hard plum will soften on the counter over several days but rarely gets much sweeter in the process, since plums (unlike bananas) convert relatively little starch to sugar after picking — the main benefit of counter-ripening is texture, not a big flavor payoff.

Most fresh eating plums, including popular varieties like Santa Rosa, simply hold too much water to dry into a prune at commercial scale — that transformation depends on a different, higher-sugar type of plum bred specifically for drying rather than fresh eating.

Plums split broadly into European and Japanese varieties, with European plums (including the Italian prune plum) generally smaller, firmer, and better suited to drying into prunes, while Japanese plums tend to be larger, juicier, and more commonly eaten fresh out of hand.

A prune is simply a dried plum, specifically made from varieties with a high enough sugar content to dry well without fermenting, which is why not every fresh plum variety is well suited to being dried into a prune the way certain apple varieties are better suited to drying than others.

Umeboshi, intensely sour and salty pickled Japanese plums (technically a related fruit closer to an apricot), are a genuinely different preparation from a fresh eating plum, used as a traditional condiment and rice ball filling rather than eaten out of hand the way a ripe dessert plum is.

Plum sauce, a sweet-and-tangy condiment common in Chinese-American cooking, is traditionally made by cooking down plums with sugar, vinegar, and spices, a preparation that trades on the fruit's natural tartness balancing the sauce's sweetness.

A plum's dusty, powdery bloom on its skin, similar to the coating found on a fresh blueberry or grape, is a natural protective wax the fruit produces itself, and a duller-looking plum with that bloom intact is often a sign it hasn't been over-handled rather than a sign it's dirty or old.

Damson plums, a small, tart European variety with especially dense flesh, are prized specifically for jam and preserves rather than fresh eating, since their tartness and high pectin content set up into a firmer, more intensely flavored jam than a sweeter dessert plum would.

Slivovitz, a strong plum brandy traditional across much of Central and Eastern Europe, particularly Serbia and other Balkan countries, is distilled from fermented plums and remains a significant part of regional hospitality customs, often offered to guests as a welcoming drink.

Pluots and apriums, modern hybrid crosses between plums and apricots developed through selective breeding rather than genetic modification, have become increasingly common at farmers markets, prized for combining a plum's juiciness with an apricot's floral, honeyed sweetness.