Greengage
Prunus domestica subsp. italica · Stone fruit
Top 10 pairings
The Greengage — Reine Claude in French — is a small, round dessert plum with green to greenish-gold skin and amber, translucent flesh, widely held to be one of the sweetest and most fragrant of all plums. Beneath its plain green coat lies a dense, honeyed, faintly floral sweetness that has made it a connoisseur's fruit for centuries, eaten ripe off the tree at the height of late summer.
Picking a good onedrag
Hard and tartSoft and winey
Just ripeBuy itIt gives at the tip but slices clean off the stone. Bake it in tarts, grill the halves or roast it.
Skin and bloomDeep even colour, bloom intact
FleshSprings at the tip, no dents
Stem hollowColour runs into the hollow
SmellFaintly sweet up close
Reading a just ripe one. Move the slider and the rest of this page — nutrition, pairings — updates with it. These cues are Plum's, and hold across its varieties; where this one differs, its own page says so.
What you get from one
94%
Edible part
66 g · stone out, skin on
70 g
Weight each
each one
Keeping ittap a temperature
A domestic fridge holds it about 5× longer than the counter.
90-95%
Humidity
Loose, single layer
Airflow