Beach plum

Prunus maritima · Stone fruit

40 pairings

The beach plum (Prunus maritima) is a small wild stone fruit borne on a salt-tolerant shrub native to the sandy Atlantic coast of North America. Tart, skin-thick and intensely flavoured, it is rarely eaten raw but prized for jams, jellies and country wines from New England down to the Mid-Atlantic.

Picking a good onedrag

Green and clingingSplit and fermenting

Just ripeColoured but still firm — the jelly and jam picking, tart with the pectin still in.Buy it

SkinFull colour for its bush, under a heavy pale bloom

SqueezeFirm, barely dents

StemComes away with a light twist

SmellFaint tart plum right at the skin

Reading a just ripe one. Move the slider and the rest of this page — nutrition, pairings — re-scores with it.

Keeping ittap a band

A domestic fridge holds it about 3× longer than the counter.

Humidity

90–95%

Damp air keeps the skins from shrivelling. Move them by the punnet, not the fruit: the pale bloom is the plum's own wax and rubs off for good.

Airflow

Still air, not sealed

A vented punnet or a loosely folded bag. Sealed tight the small soft fruit sweats, and one mouldy plum takes the layer under it.

It ripens itself, and everything near it

Climacteric like other plums: a moderate ethylene producer and very sensitive to it. Bagged with a banana, hard fruit softens in a day or two.

Preparing