Ladies and gentlemen, it is plum time. Today I'm going to talk about plums, which...
Yeah, that's exciting. I haven't really talked
That much about plums in the past. I talked about an unripe plum that was pretty interesting.
And I talked about some plum hybrid once. The difficulty is to talk about something that is so common
as a plum
And make it interesting. So that is why I have waited
Oh so long to really take a closer look at plums
And today I think I figured out how to do it. I have with me
A few different varieties of plums and some of them I think are interesting. I think you're going to think they're interesting too.
There are several different species of plums out there in the world. But the ones that we get from supermarkets are only one of two,
generally. We have prunus
salacina
and prunus domestica. Now prunus salicina are the big chunky ones that you'll find. The ones that are kind of like, uh,
apple size or small apple size
So the black plum here for instance is a prunus salicina.
Maybe there's some more parentage in there, too
but that is generally what you think of when you think of prunus salicina: these big chunky ones. And prunus domestica are
Smaller ones, like this one here. This is a sugar plum
And uh, these are more common to be used in like dried applications
So if you get like prunes
It's usually one of these.
It's not gonna be one of these. I mean if you get a dried one of these it's gonna be a big ass prune
But you're more likely to find one of these being used dried.
There are several other species of plum, but they're not so common.
Sometimes they are used in hybrids to create other plums,
and one of those which I am very happy to have is
this.
This is a green gauge. If you live in a lot of parts of europe, this is not an uncommon thing
You will find the sad markets
But in the united states, these are very very rare and other parts of the world very very rare
uh
The this is actually the first time that I've ever seen one of these, and I found this at a Russian supermarket
deep in the bowels of Brooklyn. Now, the greengage is actually a hybrid between
prunus domestica
and prunus
insititia. Probably saying that wrong.
There are also some very interesting hybrids out there that involve
Things that you normally wouldn't consider to be a plum, like the apricot. Like apricots and plums can hybridize together.
They are related closely enough where you can do that and that's where you get things like the aprium or the pluot
There's also some other even crazier ones out there where people are trying to combine cherries with plums and peaches with
plums and
Whatever else. So you get some pretty interesting hybrids out there, and on top of that there are a bunch of different cultivars.
So you've got
different variations of just the plum species and also the
Different plum hybrid species, so there's all sorts of different plums out there.
I have one other one that I'm going to try that, uh, I picked up because it looks interesting.
This is a lemon plum and I like this one because it's got this little point to it. While looking up
information about the lemon plum, I came across uh a website
Naturalfactors.com which sells I believe fruit, but also like a whole bunch of like herbal medicine and supplements and stuff like that
Listen to what they have to say about this:
"The lemon plum is a hybrid of plum and citrus that's primarily grown in Chile
Along with a small number of specialty fruit farms in the U.S." Which is a completely
Idiotic thing to say. You cannot cross a plum with a lemon. They are not related.
I don't know how somebody could have written that and then
Had the nerve to actually put sources
of their references at the bottom because that is obviously
Something that they pulled directly out of their butt.
So anyway
Let's do a comparison of these four very different plum varieties that I have here
And see if one stands above the rest.
As a control, I'm going to start with probably the most common of all of them: the black plum
There we go. Now what's amazing here is look at that seed! For the size of this fruit that is impressively small.
From the outside, it looks pretty good. Looks like it's ready and it's uh
A little bit soft, but I think this one needs to ripen a little bit more
Because it's quite tart.
Like a seven out of ten.
It's not like
Unbearable or anything, but it is quite sour. More sour than an orange. I'd say the sweetness is maybe like a four out of ten.
It tastes like a normal plum,
Just less sweet, more sour. Maybe like if you took a normal plum and put some lemon juice on it.
It's not bad by any means but
it's
pretty like substandard.
Next, let's try the lemon plum.
I think this is a good one to do next just because it's uh
Closest as far as species goes. They're both salicina
and inside
The inside is kind of interesting because uh the seed is still
Pretty small, but the space is for a larger seed.
Hm! That's really good. I think the black plum was a bad sample. Just like way too under ripe.
This one I think is a perfect sample.
It's um
nice, it melts in your mouth when you chew it.
Sweetness is really good.
Still not very high though. I say the sweetness on this is on par with an apple. Tartness is quite low.
There's a little bit, maybe like a two out of ten.
There's notes of um
apricot
and notes of
vanilla in there.
It does have like your your standard plum flavor
But the plum flavor is lower
Than the other flavors. That's definitely better than the sort of plum that you just pick up at a supermarket.
It's got a little bit more character to it,
but still has a distinct plum flavor
Next let's try the sugar plum.
What's funny is that the seed on this one
is um
just about the same as the other two. If not maybe a little bit bigger than that first one,
But the amount of fruit you get is very small
This tastes more like what you would expect a plum to taste like.
It's sweet
I wouldn't say it's
sugar, but it is more than an apple. I'd say the sweetness is probably a seven. The tartness is very low, I'd say it's like
um like a zero or one.
It tastes exactly what you would expect a plum to taste like,
just maybe a little bit sweeter than the ones you would get at a supermarket.
Next, and last, the one that I'm looking forward to the most: the green gauge.
Ooh, I could tell this one's going to be nice and soft just from cutting it.
It feels very juicy.
Yeah, looks juicy on the inside too. You see like how uh wet it is in there.
Hmm, oh wow. It does not taste like your standard plum. There is something else in there,
and I'm not sure what that is. Let's see if we can figure it out.
First to break it down a little bit, the sweetness is very high. Um
It's not quite sugar, but it's close I would say.
I'd say it's an eight.
You know, it's maybe a nine. It's like it's pretty high up there. That is very very sweet.
Definitely the sweetest one out of all of these.
It does have some tartness to it.
Maybe a three out of ten at tartness.
This
tastes... like
a fruit that is in syrup
but
It's not in syrup.
It's got
something akin to like a maracino cherry
but
With so much more to it. It has like a honey sort of taste. It has a vanilla taste, it has
a touch of like a spice to it like a like a little touch of cinnamon.
It has a bit of apricot in there. It tastes like a like a cocktail of different flavors
In a fruit. I think that is all I could possibly say about plums today.
Very cool to get a chance to try these side by side and just see
how much variation there is in flavor
from one plum to another. Plums are something that I very rarely buy at
supermarkets, and I think that's part of the reason why I waited so long before
taking uh, more of a deep dive into plums for this for this channel.
But uh, this has shown me that there are some really really good ones out there.
There's a lot of different variation and some of them are really crappy. The ones we get at supermarkets are usually not very good
but uh that is not really a good example of how good they can be. So
if you uh, go to a market and you see one that looks good
or you go to a farmer's market, pick up some plums guys. Try them, compare them.
I think you'll be surprised with how good some of them can be.
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