Plum sauce

by Pauline Chavannes de Senerpont Domis · Published December 13, 2017 · Updated November 3, 2018

This plum sauce is savory and sweet. It contains onions and herbs, but also sugar and cinnamon. That sounds maybe like a crazy combination but it is delicious. We eat this plum sauce as a condiment on Chinese pancakes with duck, cucumber, and spring onions. Delicious!

Zwetschge

Beb Vuyk has a plum sauce in her book, but I did not recognize it. It is called Chutney of zwetschge (Chutney van Kwetsen in Dutch). After a short Google search, I find out that it is a subspecies of plums.

I use a different plum recipe for my oven duck, but it does not differ much from Beb’s recipe. Beb uses stem ginger or baby ginger in her chutney, I like that idea but for next time.

Here is my version of plum sauce.

This recipe is enough for 450 grams of plum sauce and is ready in 30 minutes.

30-40 prunes without the stone (pit)
5 tablespoons of onions (I use red onions, but that is not necessary)
2 cloves of garlic
fresh ginger of about 4 cm
150 grams of sugar
100 milliliters of rice vinegar
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon of pepper
1/4 teaspoon of grounded cloves
300 milliliters of water

First I sauté the finely chopped onions and garlic with the fresh ginger. I peel and cut the fresh ginger in tiny pieces. When the onions are yellow, I add the herbs and salt and all the plums with the water, sugar, and vinegar. Now everything can slowly thicken on low fire.

According to Beb, the plum sauce must be stored for at least six weeks before it can be used.

I need my plum sauce now so I eat it straight away with my oven duck. ? I’ve made about 450 grams so lots of extra sauce to experiment with.

I keep one part in my fridge and the rest I freeze for later. The flavor of the sauce in my fridge is getting better every week indeed. It’s in there now for a while and the umami flavor intensifies.

In any case, it is a delicious sauce, especially in combination with duck. Something sweet and savory fits perfectly with that bird. I also love the color of this rich plum sauce. It feels like Christmas already!