Methley plum
Prunus salicina · Stone fruit
Top 10 pairings
The Methley is a small-to-medium Japanese plum (Prunus salicina) prized as one of the earliest, sweetest and most reliable home-garden plums of the warm South. It wears a deep reddish-purple to mahogany skin dusted with a silvery bloom and cuts to soft, juicy flesh that is unusually red — crimson clear through rather than the amber of most plums — eating mild, very sweet and low in acid with almost no skin tartness, the classic dooryard plum a child can eat by the handful.
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