OP: Plum Crazy: A Book About Beach Plums

Parnassus Imprints, Inc., 1973. Paperback. Near Fine.

By the author’s own description, Plum Crazy (1973) is “a lighthearted miscellany” about a fruit whose natural habitat is the sand dunes of the northern American Atlantic coast.

The casual and pleasantly readable horticultural and historical account segues into recipes demonstrating the wide culinary use for the beach plum. “When you think about beach plums—if you think about them at all—you associate them with jelly, but jelly is just the beginning,” says Elizabeth Post Mirel in her introduction. Of course, there are some expected goodies like those jellies, as well as muffins, pies and the like, but the more surprising dishes include:

• A 17th century lobster stew with plums, red wine, nutmeg, and a heap of butter
• Plum barbecue sauce with onions, garlic, ketchup, vermouth, and ground mustard, chili, and cumin
• Peas lightly cooked in butter and tossed with beach plum jelly and chives
• An omelet filled with a mixture of plum jelly, cottage cheese, and orange zest
• Beach plum switchel—a beverage, in this case, involving buttermilk, plum shrub, bitters, and mint

Our copy is a Near Fine, unused paperback. Black and white drawings throughout by children’s book illustrator Betty Fraser. An attractive and unusual book for connoisseurs and the curious.