Plums that look like damsons - but aren't

[Loiseau]

Not sure if this belongs in cooking or gardening - it sort of straddles both.

This looks like a bumper year for fruit in my garden.

One tree is laden with what look like damsons.  It is a French, self-sown tree, and as the French never seem to have

heard of damsons (prunes de damas) I am certain that it is not a damson

as we know it.

From sampling the fruit on the ground, they taste like rather sweeter damsons.

But if you cook them, they develop a horrid bitter taste - even with copious amounts of sugar added.

Has anybody worked out what you can do with these?  I can't bear to waste them, but there will be a limit to how many raw ones I can eat.  I should like to have incorporated them into a pud to serve up to friends coming tomorrow!

Angela

[Frederick]

http://www.cottagesmallholder.com/two-wild-plum-jam-recipes-38       There is always this ... There is a chemical plums give out when cooked very hot... thats the bitter taste .

[Hoddy]

These sound similar to some we have. They do look like a damson although they are rounder and a little larger. Faced with a bumper crop we thought we'd try some jam from them. We just did a small amount to start with and my other half, who eats quite a bit of jam, pronounced it delicious so we made lots more.

Hoddy

[FairyNuff]

These sound like prunes de St Jean, small plums about the size of  the yellow mirabelle. They're sometimes called cherry plums. We've made jam with them, and this year we've preserved some in alcohol, along the lines of sloe gin. We'll see how they turn out around Christmas time! [:D]

FairyNuff

[Loiseau]

No, they're bigger than a mirabelle, FN.

Frederick, that's interesting about them being bitter only when hot.  I guess I have always thrown them away in disgust on first taste! 

I have waited to let today's batch cool down, and the bitter taste is not quite so pronounced - though it's still there.  I sampled flesh separately from skin too; the bitterness seems to be in the former rather than the latter.

I didn't risk it on my friends, in case they had to smile politely through something horrible.  I made them choc mousse instead!

Might try the jam recipe though - thanks for that.

Angela

[Rob Roy]

Could they be bullace?

http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/b/bullac86.html

[FairyNuff]

Could they be quetsches? They're apparently mostly found in north east France, Luxembourg and Germany.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetsche

FairyNuff

Edit: I posted this on the wrong thread [:$], so I've copied it here.