|
 During the First World War, when the threat of scurvy hung over the trenches, heavy and sticky black pancakes began to be brought to the front. In color and thickness, they resembled the usual roofing paper with which the roofs of sheds are covered, and were also rolled into rolls.
The black pancakes felt like plasticine to the touch. And it tastes like lemon. Lavash, as the unusual dish was called, was brought from the Caucasus. There it was made from sour plum - cherry plum. They took the seeds out of the fruits, boiled them and dried them on the roofs. The soldiers tore pieces off the rolls and ate them with soup and porridge. There was a lot of vitamin C in pita bread.
During the Great Patriotic War, I also had to meet cherry plum. In Bulgaria, our unit stopped for a halt near the town of Plevna. On the river bank in the distance was a white marble monument to the Russian soldiers who liberated Bulgaria from the Turkish yoke. We went to look at the monument. It was surrounded by a stone ditch. Water flowed along the irrigation ditch. The bottom of the ditch was gold. At first we did not understand what the bottom was. Then someone bent down to get drunk. "Guys, at the bottom of the berry!" And he scooped up a handful of fruits. Then we looked up and saw above us the crowns of cherry plum, completely hung with golden balls. As they ripened, they fell into the water and accumulated there like golden sand. The fruit was sour and cool. There could be no better tree to decorate the monument.
Cherry plum is not only tasty and beautiful. She is said to be the progenitor of our domestic plums. Another parent is a wild blackthorn that grows in blue floods on the Don and along the Crimean steppes. Botanist V. Ryabov decided to check if they were speaking correctly. He crossed this pair and actually got a synthetic plum, very similar to the house plum.
Gardeners have experimented a lot with plums. We have created more than one valuable variety that lives to this day. But then one day a scientist, whose favorite brainchild was the plum, wondered: why should the plum have a bone? The tree spends so much energy on it! Instead of wasting scarce material on bone, the plum could provide more pulp. The harvest would double!
Of course, he knew that in nature a bone is a necessary thing. Its role is to protect the seed. If there were no bones, the seeds would have been eaten by the beast long ago and, perhaps, the plum would not have survived to this day. But now, when the tree is under the care of gardeners, the bone has clearly become an extra ballast. Perhaps it is even useless for the species. True, a new tree nevertheless begins with a stone, but after all, a plum is most often grafted onto a stem of another breed: now on cherry plum, then on blackthorn, then even on a peach or apricot. So from this point of view, it is not necessary to preserve the bone.
Having made this conclusion, the scientist began to look for a way to solve the cherished problem. He learned that in France there is a wild blackthorn, which has almost no seed. Only one thin belt remained of it. True, the fruit of the blackthorn is small, the size of a cranberry, but for the breeder this is not so important. In 1890, the gardener received the necessary material from France and got down to business. He sorted out many good varieties, crossing them with thorns and grafting a hybrid onto the roots of an ordinary Hungarian.
Finally, the desired tree was created, matured, matured and bore the first fruits. The gardener invites connoisseurs, hands them a knife and asks to cut the plum across. They crumple in indecision: there is a bone inside, it will not give. But no, the knife goes through the center of the fruit like a piece of butter. Connoisseurs do not believe their eyes.
“Even the toes of their boots expressed extreme amazement,” the scientist wrote.
He prophesied a resounding success for his brainchild. He believed that in a few years it would conquer the world and that fruits with seeds would be remembered as a funny joke of nature. Alas, almost a hundred years have passed, and the plum still has a rock-hard core in the middle. Experts claim that over the past two decades, no one in the world has written a single line about the mysterious tree. What happened to the priceless variety? Probably, the gardener himself could answer, but he died long ago.Perhaps, along with the seed, the variety has lost some valuable qualities? Or was it simply considered a curiosity?
We still throw the bones in the trash. True, not always. In Yugoslavia, for example, they are used instead of firewood. There, in factories, it is often necessary to separate the pulp for compotes or make frozen halves for export. There are so many bones left that it is quite enough for the furnace of factory stoves. Unusual fuel is used both in the Caucasus and in other plum countries.
There are a lot of plum varieties in the world. In the middle of summer, round green rents appear, so sweet that you can't eat much. By autumn they are replaced by Hungarian women, black, oval, similar to the eggs of strange birds, and what a delicious plum Anna Shpet! In Siberia, where plums never grew, the Krasnoyarsk doctor V. Krutovsky bred the Ussuri plum with a coal-black trunk, as if smeared with soot. Its fruits, small as cherry, and yellow, like lemon, are very good when there are no real, southern ones at hand.
However, in the south, in the blessed Crimea, gardeners do not like an elegant Hungarian woman and not the most delicate rennlode, but a black plum as small as grapes. There is a lot of it on the market in September. Visitors are surprised at the name "Isomeric". It seems to them that chemistry, "isomers" are involved. In fact, this is just a distorted "Raisin-Eric" - an old Crimean variety. Dried, it looks like a raisin. And it tastes better than the best Yugoslavian prunes. Raisin-Eric just fine. But all other qualities in him are rated at five. Blooms late, is not afraid of frost. He is not afraid of pests either. The crops are always plentiful. Does not deteriorate in transportation.
Aristocratic Renklods and Hungarian women, of course, are five times larger, but they often get sick, the harvest can never be predicted in advance. And it is difficult to transport. And birds love them more. In England, for example, bullfinches in particular are rampant, they cause huge devastation. But in 1967 the Garden Chronicle magazine found a way out of an unpleasant situation. It turns out that you just need to switch the birds to more delicious food. The magazine suggested ... the usual plantain. From the point of view of bullfinches, its fruits are magnificent. And from the plums, the birds happily switched to this pasture.
A. Smirnov. Tops and roots
 |
Spicy dried plums in the microwave (experiment)
(Tumanchik) |
 |
Plum, dried in the microwave
(Natalishka) |
 |
Dried prunes
(Admin) |
 |
Salted Japanese plum "umeboshi"
(Admin) |
 |
Plum, small, dried (semi-dried)
(Admin) |
 |
Hungarian plum, natural, in its own juice (oven)
(Admin) |
 |
Oven-baked plum with salt and pepper
(Admin) |
 |
Pie "Plum in chocolate"
(Twist) |
 |
Plum baked in port
(Linadoc) |
 |
Plums in their own juice
(fomca) |
 |
Plum jam with citrus zest
(Scarecrow) |
 |
Caramelized plum in cinnamon on brioche
(MariS) |
 |
Pastila with unripe plum with chocolate (infrared dehydrator L'equip IR-D5)
(gawala) |
 |
Plum curry sauce
(button) |
 |
Adjika from plums
(TATbRHA) |
 |
Plum jam
(Tatyana1103) |
 |
Dried prunes in the dryer Travolka
(Lyi) |
 |
Jam plum lazy (multicooker Brand 37501)
(Vasilika) |
 |
Dessert prunes "candied fruits (glace fruits)", with rum, star anise, cinnamon, pink pepper
(Admin) |
 |
Jam from green cherry plum
(Admin) |
 |
Dried plums
(Alexandra) |
 |
Plum cake
(Vitalinka) |
 |
Pie "Plums under sour cream filling"
(galchonok) |
 |
Plum jam with tomatoes
(Admin) |
 |
Sun-dried plums in Ourson dehydrator
(GruSha) |
 |
Plum concentrate for sauce, juice |
 |
Pickled plums |
 |
Adjika from plums and apples in a slow cooker |
 |
Plum jam "Lenivka" |
 |
Spicy prunes, table "candied fruits (glace fruits)", with rosemary, thyme |
 |
Plum and apricot cupcake |
 |
Plum sauce with horseradish (for every day and preparations) |
 |
Tkemali "by simple" from unripe plums |
 |
Plum pie with cognac |
 |
Plum Jam (Old Calendar Leaf Recipe) |
 |
Plum pie |
 |
Plum spicy marshmallow and candies from it |
 |
Ossetian plum pie |
 |
Fragrant plums in syrup |
 |
Plum cake made from yeast dough Zwetschgenkuchen mit Hefeteigboden (Polaris Floris 0508D and Kitchen 0507D) |
 |
Plum Cobbler (Cuckoo 1054) |
 |
Christmas plum pudding |
 |
Plum pie on buckwheat flour with beer |
 |
Plum cake with curd filling |
 |
Plum pie in pizza maker Princess 115000 |
 |
Plum jam according to the recipe of our great-grandmothers |
 |
Flip Plum Pie |
 |
Frangipan plum pie |
 |
Chocolate plum cake in Princess pizza maker 11500198 |
 |
Plum jam |
 |
Nougat ice cream with prunes |
 |
Cheesecake "Prunes in chocolate" |
 |
Plum dumplings (Zwetschkenknoedel) |
 |
Plum jam cupcake |
 |
Plum jam "For one meal" |
 |
Plum cake with chocolate |
 |
Wheat bread with plum liqueur |
 |
Plum and pear cobbler in a multicooker Redmond RMC-01 |
 |
Shortbread pie with cottage cheese and plums |
 |
Creamy plum pie |
 |
Diet Plum Cheesecake Pie |
 |
Plum Plum Pie |
 |
Plum soufflé |
 |
Jamie Oliver Plum Pie |
 |
Walnut Plum Smoothie |
 |
Spicy dried plums (Oursson dehydrator) |
 |
Smoked candied plums |
 |
A la Prunes in an electric dryer |
 |
Chocolate plum jam |
 |
Fig and plum tart on cream patisier with goat cheese, sherry and court |
 |
Plum yeast pie with streusel |
 |
Plum pie in streusel |
 |
Terrine chocolate-plum |
 |
Variegated plum cake with curd dough |
 |
Diet Plum Jam with Bitter Chocolate |
 |
Plum marmalade |
 |
Jam plum chocolate |
 |
Plum tart with cream (Princess 115000 pizza maker) |
 |
Plum pie with nut crocant |
 |
Plum pie with Italian meringue |
 |
Baked plum jam |
 |
Plum pie |
 |
Thuringian Plum Pie (Thueringer Zwetschenkuchen) |
 |
Jamie Oliver Plum Pie |
 |
Plum Pie with Vanilla Pudding |
 |
Plum mousse |
 |
Curd and plum pie |
 |
Plum Man (Zwetschgenmаеnnla) |
 |
Tea and plum cake in a multicooker Philips HD3060 |
 |
Biscuit surprise cake with plum jam and semolina cream |
 |
New York Times Plum Pie |
 |
Apple-plum pie (multicooker-pressure cooker Brand 6051) |
 |
Plum Pie - New York Times Recipe |
 |
Creamy plum cake "Chocolate May" |
 |
Curd biscuit with plums |
 |
Duck stuffed with plums in honey glaze |
 |
Bulgarian pepper stuffed with plums |
 |
German pie with fresh plums |
 |
Adjika from zucchini and plums in a slow cooker |
 |
Hazelnut and plum crumble pie |
 |
Vegan "green rolls" appetizer with sun-dried tomato and plum sauce |
 |
Lamb with plum based on chakapuli |
 |
Chocolate-plum jam |
 |
Plum Jam Pie |
 |
Tomato ketchup with plums, peppers and apples |
 |
Fragrant pear and plum jam |
 |
Pickled grapes and plums |
|
