French Plums AKA Sugar Plums, French Prunes. (Prunus domestica)
It’s hard to know what to call these delicious plums since they are an American cultivar of the Prune D’Agen, which gets kinda complicated because the French word for “plum” is “prune” and even more complicated because traditionally these plums were always dried and thus with French perversity no longer called “prunes” but rather “pruneaux”. Worse yet, their primary use in this country was for drying so that they’d then be called “prunes” in English.
The bottom line, though, is that they are a superb plum for eating fresh. They are deliciously sweet and have a mouth feel that most people find “chewy”, in the best sense.
They have a short season, so get them while you can. I got these from Marie at Rodin Farms, but quite a few other vendors have them, including Glenn Tanimoto and Arata Farms.
And get some extra to make a superb jam, and perhaps for the second batch you can brighten it up even more by the addition at the beginning of some seeded, deveined, and chopped chiles.
So that’s what i did.