Every August, when the damson plums come in dark and dusty-blue on the little trees by the fence row, I start thinking of all the old reliable things to do with them: jam simmered slow in my big enamel pot, plum butter cooked down until it shines, or a good tart with enough sugar to make those sharp fruits behave themselves. But every now and then, even at my age, a person gets curious in the kitchen. That is how I found myself standing at the counter with 1 1/2 pounds of fresh damson plums, a can of cold cream of mushroom soup, a palmful of whole dried epazote, and a thick squeeze of anchovy paste, wondering whether I had stumbled onto genius or plain foolishness.
Twenty minutes later, I had my answer, and I can tell you it was memorable in every sense of the word. If you are here because that headline made you laugh, wince, or worry for my frying oil, you are in the right place. I’m going to walk you through exactly what I used, what happened in the pot, how it smelled, how it tasted, why the coating behaved the way it did, and whether there is anything at all worth learning from this wild little August experiment.
1. The exact ingredients I used
I used about 1 1/2 pounds of fresh August damson plums, roughly 28 to 32 small plums, washed and patted dry. Damsons are not like those big soft grocery-store black plums. They are smaller, firmer, and a good deal more tart, with skins that bring a deep tannic bite. Mine were ripe but not mushy, probably 1 1/4 inches long each.
For the coating, I opened one 10 1/2-ounce can of condensed cream of mushroom soup straight from the refrigerator, so it was cold and thick. Into that I stirred 1 tablespoon whole dried epazote and about 1 tablespoon anchovy paste, squeezed from the tube with a fairly generous hand. I did not add flour, cornstarch, egg, or sparkling water, which any sensible tempura batter would have had. For frying, I used about 2 quarts of vegetable oil in a heavy Dutch oven and heated it to 365 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Why I thought it might work, at least for a minute
Now, if you have cooked as long as I have, you know the kitchen can reward boldness now and then. A cold batter clings better than a warm one. Soup has starch in it. Anchovy can bring savory depth the way fish sauce does in some dishes. And epazote, though not a Midwestern pantry staple when I was a girl, has a pungent herbal character that can be marvelous with earthy foods.
My line of thinking, flawed though it turned out to be, was this: tart fruit sometimes benefits from savory contrast. We pair pork with fruit, cheese with preserves, and herbs with stone fruit in salads. So somewhere in my mind, I imagined a crisp shell around a juicy plum, with mushroomy umami and a faint herbal edge. On paper, it sounded eccentric. In hot oil, it turned downright unruly.
3. Mixing the “batter” and the first warning signs
As soon as I stirred the soup, epazote, and anchovy paste together, I should have taken the hint. The mixture was thick, glossy, and pale beige with green-brown herb flecks. It smelled strongly of canned soup first, anchovy second, and dried epazote last. The epazote stayed whole and stiff rather than softening into the mixture, so the coating looked pebbly instead of smooth.
When I dipped the plums, the coating did not behave like batter. It did not lightly veil the fruit. It smothered it. Each plum picked up a heavy layer nearly 1/8 inch thick in places, and because the surface of the plum is naturally taut and smooth, the cold soup wanted to slide. I had to turn each one with a fork and scrape extra coating off against the bowl, otherwise I had drippy tails of soup falling back into the dish.
4. What happened the moment the plums hit the oil
The first plum went into the 365-degree oil and immediately dropped the temperature to about 350. That was normal enough. What was not normal was the way the coating loosened almost at once. Instead of setting into a crisp shell, the soup mixture puffed in some spots, sagged in others, and released little streamers into the oil.
By the time I added 6 plums, the oil was spitting more than bubbling. The milk solids and starches in the condensed soup were scorching before they could form structure. The anchovy paste dissolved right out into the fat. The whole dried epazote leaves, no longer held tightly in the coating, began floating free like tiny dark rafts. The pot smelled like a church supper casserole had fallen into a bait bucket beside an herb patch.
5. The 20-minute mark: the real result
At 20 minutes, I had not achieved a platter of crisp, golden, tempura-like fruit. What I had was a batch of dark, irregular fried lumps with several casualties. Of the first 12 plums I fried, 4 lost most of their coating entirely, 3 burst at the seam and leaked juice into the oil, and the rest came out patchy, with some areas browned and others still soft and pasty.
The exterior color was not appetizing. Instead of a light golden crust, it leaned muddy brown with olive-green flecks from the epazote. Some spots were darker than I would have liked, nearly chestnut brown after only 2 1/2 to 3 minutes per batch. That told me the soup base was browning too fast on the outside while the fruit inside was still steaming.
6. How it smelled in the kitchen
I have lived long enough to know that not every good dish smells good in every stage, but this one never did come around. First there was the canned mushroom aroma, that soft, salty, processed smell many of us know from casseroles. Then the anchovy hit the hot oil and gave off a fishy, fermented note that was stronger than I expected from just 1 tablespoon. The epazote added a medicinal, resinous edge that did not marry well with the sweet-tart plum steam escaping from cracked skins.
If I had to describe it plainly, it smelled like three different suppers arguing with one another. There was the orchard fruit, the pantry soup, and the savory paste, and none of them wanted to sit at the same table. I opened the window over the sink, turned on the fan, and still the scent hung around for a good hour.
7. The texture problem was even worse than the flavor
The biggest failure was texture. Tempura works because the batter is light, cold, and relatively low in moisture density once it hits the oil, especially with flour and often a bit of starch helping it crisp. Condensed cream soup is the opposite. It is dense, wet, salty, and full of milk solids and stabilizers. Deep-frying that around juicy fruit is asking one source of water to battle another.
The outside on the best pieces was crisp only in tiny ridges. The rest ranged from leathery to soggy. Inside, the plum flesh softened quickly, but the skins tightened and sometimes slipped away from the flesh, leaving a curious gap between fruit and coating. On the burst plums, hot juice made the coating gummy where it mixed together. Biting into one gave me crisp edge, paste, slippery skin, and sour juice in one mouthful. It was not pleasant.
8. And the taste? Stranger than I expected
The first taste was sharp plum acidity, because damsons do not play around. Right after that came salt from the soup and anchovy, followed by a mushroom note that somehow made the fruit taste even more medicinal. The epazote did not infuse delicately; because I used it whole and dried, you encountered little bursts of strong herb in uneven pockets.
On two of the least broken pieces, I tried a careful second bite just to be fair. What I noticed was that the sweetness never had a chance. There was not enough sugar anywhere in the setup to bridge the distance between sour fruit and savory coating. A pinch of sugar in a batter can do wonders, but here there was none. The result tasted confused, briny, tart, and faintly bitter.
9. Why the science worked against me
There is a practical lesson here, and I think it is worth sharing. A proper frying batter needs a structure-forming ingredient, usually flour, often with cornstarch or rice flour, and sometimes a leavening component or very cold sparkling water to keep it light. Cream of mushroom soup already contains water, fat, starch, and proteins in a cooked emulsion. That emulsion breaks and scorches in hot oil long before it can mimic tempura.
Then there is the fruit itself. Damson plums have thin skins and a moist interior, and they release steam quickly. When a weak coating meets a wet fruit, separation happens. The steam pushes out, the coating slides, and the oil gets dirty fast. Add anchovy paste, which dissolves, and whole dried epazote, which does not evenly distribute, and you get a frying medium full of debris after one or two batches.
10. What happened to the oil and why that matters
After just 2 small batches, my once-clear oil had gone cloudy with browned bits. The free-floating soup solids and herb fragments continued cooking at the bottom of the pot, which made each subsequent batch darker and more bitter. I strained the oil after the first round through a fine mesh sieve lined with paper towel, but even then it carried a noticeable savory odor I would not have wanted in doughnuts, chicken, or potatoes later on.
This matters because deep-frying is not cheap anymore. Two quarts of oil can cost a fair bit depending on what you buy, and ruining a batch for the sake of curiosity is one thing, but ruining your oil as well is a second offense. If you are tempted to recreate this just for the spectacle, use old oil you were planning to discard anyway, and fry outdoors if you can.
11. Was any part of it salvageable?
I always try not to waste food, so I looked for some redeeming angle. I cut one fried plum apart and scraped off the coating. The fruit inside was hot, soft, and still very tart, but not bad on its own. That confirmed what I suspected: the damsons were innocent. The trouble was the shell we put around them.
The coating itself was beyond saving as a crisp element, but it did teach me something useful. The mushroom-and-anchovy combination might have a place in a savory fritter with sliced vegetables, flour, and egg to stabilize it, though I would still mince the epazote fine and use much less. Around plums, however, it simply fought the fruit from first bite to last.
12. If you want fried plums, here is what I would do instead
If your heart is set on fried damson plums, I would go one of two routes. First, a proper tempura-style batter: 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup rice flour or cornstarch, 1 beaten egg, and 3/4 cup ice-cold sparkling water, stirred just until shaggy. Pit the plums if possible, or at least prick them once so they do not burst as violently. Dust them lightly in flour before dipping. Fry at 350 to 360 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes.
The second route, and the one I’d choose on my own stove, is simpler and truer to the fruit: halve and pit the damsons, toss them with 2 to 3 tablespoons sugar and 1 tablespoon flour, then spoon them into a skillet cobbler or fold them into a batter pudding. You get all that lovely tartness softened by heat, without asking them to wear a mushroom coat they never wanted.
13. Better flavor pairings for damson plums
Damsons love sugar, cinnamon, cloves, vanilla, almond, and orange zest. They also do well with honey and a little black pepper if you want depth. In savory cooking, I have had better luck pairing tart plums with pork shoulder, roast chicken, red onion, and thyme than with marine or canned flavors.
If you truly want an herbal note, try 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves or a little rosemary used very lightly. If you want umami, use it indirectly through browned butter, toasted nuts, or a slice of aged cheese alongside the finished fruit. Anchovy has its place, goodness knows, but that place is not wrapped around a whole damson in deep fat.
14. My honest verdict after the experiment
So, 20 minutes later, what happened? The coating slid, scorched, and separated. The plums burst and steamed. The oil fouled. The kitchen smelled questionable. The finished pieces were patchy, soggy, and aggressively odd in flavor. In plain Midwestern terms, it was a mess.
Still, I don’t regret trying it. A long cooking life is built on both triumphs and stories, and sometimes the stories come from the dishes that absolutely should not be repeated. I’ve fed farmhands, church potlucks, grandbabies, and holiday tables for decades, and I can tell you this with confidence: not every idea deserves a second batch.
15. The lesson I’m taking into the next August
What I’ll remember most is not the failure itself, but the reminder that good cooking usually begins by respecting the nature of an ingredient. Fresh August damson plums are bright, tart, and beautiful in their own stern little way. They need balance, not punishment. They need sugar, pastry, cream, or a spoonful of something gentle, not a heavy cloak of soup and fish paste.
Next August, I’ll be back at my old enamel pot making plum butter the way my mother did, letting the fruit tell me what it wants to become. And if I get the urge to experiment again, I may still do it, because curiosity keeps a cook lively. But I’ll keep the cream of mushroom soup for casseroles, the anchovy paste for dressing, and the epazote for a pot of beans where it belongs.
