{
    "id": 1070491,
    "title": "Soor plooms",
    "slug": "soor-plooms",
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    "url": "https://sweeties.net/wiki/soor-plooms/",
    "modified": "2026-09-26T13:11:58+01:00",
    "excerpt": "Soor plooms are sharp green boiled sweets from Galashiels in the Scottish Borders. The name means sour plums, and it is also the town's motto.",
    "content_text": "A soor ploom is a sharp flavoured, round, green boiled sweet from Galashiels, a town in the Scottish Borders. The name is Scots for sour plum, and the flavour lives up to it: sweet, but with a sharp, slightly acidic bite.\nSold the old way\nSoor plooms are sold loose by weight in paper bags, traditionally by the quarter, meaning a quarter of a pound, about 113 g. That is how most traditional boiled sweets were sold before metric weights: see what a quarter of sweets means.\nThe skirmish of 1337\nThe sweets come with a story. According to local tradition, they were first made to remember an event in 1337, during the long wars between England and Scotland. A raiding party of English soldiers was discovered near Galashiels picking and eating unripe wild plums, and local men caught them by surprise and killed them all.\nThe episode became part of the town's identity. Galashiels's coat of arms shows two foxes reaching up to eat plums from a tree, and the town's motto is Sour Plums, pronounced in Scots as soor plooms.\nA Borders favourite\nSoor plooms have long been described as a childhood favourite in Scotland. They have appeared in the Scottish comic strips Oor Wullie and The Broons, and there is even a Border pipe tune from around 1700 called Soor Plooms of Galashiels.\nScotland's town sweets\nThe Scottish Borders and the towns around them have a remarkable tradition of local sweets, many tied to a single town. Just down the road, Hawick has its peppermint Hawick balls, and there is a friendly rivalry between the two towns. Over the border, Berwick cockles come from Berwick upon Tweed, and in Dumfriesshire there is Moffat toffee.\nSimilar sweets\nIf you like a sharp, fruity boiled sweet, try our SW033, and read about other British boiled sweets in pear drops and sherbet lemons.",
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