The Big Little Fruit Campaign

Highlighting neglected culinary fruits

Myrobalans are small, summer-fruiting plums, also known as cherry plums. Their skin colour varies from bright yellow to very dark red. The flesh is soft and highly perishable, so you are very unlikely to see them sold commercially. They are not the same as the French mirabelle. It is ironic that so many of us know about the mirabelle, yet so few have heard of, let alone tasted or cooked with, this ancient English fruit.

The season may be as early as July or as late as September. When fully ripe, cherry plums make fairly good eating raw, and their high pectin content makes them a good bet for jam-making. The trees make a great addition to a hedgerow, where the birds will enjoy the fruit as much as you do. In all, they constitute a feast for foragers.

CHUMS…

Many members of the public have contacted the Big Little Fruit Campaign about cherry plums, in response to features in Country Living, The Guardian or elsewhere. Here’s the pick of the crop:

• Cherry plums may be round or oval. The trees, unlike bullace trees, are not thorny.

• They can be found as far afield as Yorkshire, Norfolk, East Sussex and Cornwall. Entire hedges of them exist in the south but they are also found in gardens and old orchards elsewhere.

• Like other plums, they often produce fruit biennially (ie every two years).

• In one orchard in Suffolk, they are called chums – what a great nickname! Easier to spell than myrobalan, too.

• Cherry plums grow readily from stones, which are often distributed by the birds.

• In more than one instance, they have cross-bred with bullaces or other plums, creating unique fruits of varying quality.

• Some plums await formal identification as cherry plums or otherwise. These include ‘hullaberry plums’, ‘bastard plums’ and ‘winter crack’ – food for the imagination, even if you never get to taste them!

• Cherry plums are used in a range of recipes including ice-creams, smoothies, crumbles and pies. The most popular are ones in which the fruits don’t have to be stoned before cooking.

A big thank-you to everyone who got in touch: You can call yourselves CHUMS of the Big Little Fruit Campaign!