Red Plum, Sliced in album fruit

In Albums: food fruit produce

Jun 26th, 2011, by Alex Zorach

This photo shows a red plum, sliced so that you can see both the skin and flesh. I bought this plum at Iovine's produce at the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia, for 99 cents a pound. It was delicious: extremely juicy, sweet, and with a tangy center.

I do not know very much about plum varieties, and I suspect that simple labels like "black plum" and "red plum" often gloss over distinctions between different cultivars of plum.

This particular variety of plum was delicious. It has a flesh that starts out firm and crunchy and ripens to soft and juicy, without ever reaching a mealy stage. Like most plums, the flesh is more sour closer to the pit, but I found that this distinction was actually less pronounced on this particular type of plum. I also found the skin to be pleasingly tangy. The skin is smooth, flavorful, and pleasant to eat. I also found that the pit separated from the flesh more easily than on some plums, as is evidenced in this picture, although I would not quite call this a "freestone" plum.