Maesil (green plum)

Maesil is the fruit of maehwa, the flowering apricot or Japanese apricot (Prunus mume), a small tree of the rose family. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture describes fragrant pale blossoms in early spring before the leaves, followed by fuzzy green fruits like small apricots that turn yellow by July and are intensely sour. The tree itself carries great cultural weight: blooming in the cold, it became an emblem of scholarly integrity in Korean poetry and painting.

Fruit picked green and salted then sun-dried was called baengmae; fruit dried in the smoke of burning straw without salt became omae, both used in traditional medicine for coughs, thirst and diarrhea. Maesil was also a source of vinegar: the Joseon cookbook Gyugon siuibang records dried omae ground to powder and mixed with water as a souring agent. Today the fruit is most often steeped in soju as maesil-ju or layered with sugar to make the syrup maesil-cheong.

Gwangyang, in South Jeolla, is the best-known growing area. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture notes heavy maesil production on the slopes of Baegunsan and especially in Daap-myeon along the Seomjin River, where the fruit is sold fresh and processed into extract, maesil-jangajji and drinks, and where a plum blossom festival is held each March among roughly 330,000 square meters of riverside orchards. See Jeolla.

Green fruit is picked in early summer. At home, cooks pit it and slice it for sweet-sour maesil-jangajji, pickle it in gochujang, or make syrup that is later diluted as a drink or used to sweeten namul dressings and marinades.

• Fresh fruit: Per the Korean Food Composition Table, raw maesil is low in calories with some vitamin C and potassium, though it is almost never eaten raw.
• Cyanogenic compounds: The seeds and unripe fruit contain amygdalin, which can release cyanide. Korea's Ministry of Food and Drug Safety advises removing the stems and seeds before making syrup, which it says cuts cyanogenic compounds by about 95 percent, and choosing ripe yellow fruit, which carries about 70 percent less than green fruit. A 2024 study found that amygdalin in maesil syrup falls sharply with nine months or more of maturation.
• Never eat the kernels: Do not crack and eat maesil pits or use them in home preparations.
• Sugar in syrup: Maesil-cheong is made with roughly equal weights of fruit and sugar, so it is a sweetener, not a health tonic; see sugar in Korean food.
• Traditional uses: Korean herbal medicine uses dried omae for coughs, thirst and diarrhea. These are traditional uses, not proven treatments.