A sugar plum is a piece of dragée candy that is made of dried fruits and shaped in a small round or oval shape.

"Plum" in the name of this confection does not mean plum

Plum

A plum or gage is a stone fruit tree in the genus Prunus, subgenus Prunus. The subgenus is distinguished from other subgenera in the shoots having a terminal bud and solitary side buds , the flowers in groups of one to five together on short stems, and the fruit having a groove running down one...

 in the sense of the fruit of the same name. At one time, "plum" was used to denote any dried fruit. Sugar plums can be made from any combination of dried plums (aka prunes), dried figs

FIGS

FIGS is an acronym for French, Italian, German, Spanish. These are usually the first four languages chosen to localize products into when a company enters the European market....

, dried apricots, dried dates, and dried cherries. The dried fruit is chopped fine and combined with chopped almonds, honey

Honey

Honey is a sweet food made by bees using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...

, and aromatic spices, such as anise

Anise

Anise , Pimpinella anisum, also called aniseed, is a flowering plant in the family Apiaceae native to the eastern Mediterranean region and Southwest Asia. Its flavor resembles that of liquorice, fennel, and tarragon.- Biology :...

 seed, fennel

Fennel

Fennel is a plant species in the genus Foeniculum . It is a member of the family Apiaceae . It is a hardy, perennial, umbelliferous herb, with yellow flowers and feathery leaves...

 seed, caraway

Caraway

Caraway also known as meridian fennel, or Persian cumin is a biennial plant in the family Apiaceae, native to western Asia, Europe and Northern Africa....

 seeds, and cardamom

Cardamom

Cardamom refers to several plants of the genera Elettaria and Amomum in the ginger family Zingiberaceae. Both genera are native to India and Bhutan; they are recognised by their small seed pod, triangular in cross-section and spindle-shaped, with a thin papery outer shell and small black seeds...

. This mixture would then be rolled into balls, often then coated in sugar or shredded coconut.

Today, some candy manufacturers have taken "sugar plum" literally, creating plum-flavored, plum-shaped candies and marketing them as "sugar plum candy".

Sugar plums are widely associated with Christmas

Christmas

Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...

, through cultural phenomena such as the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker

The Nutcracker

The Nutcracker is a two-act ballet, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto is adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann's story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". It was given its première at the Mariinsky Theatre in St...

(Composed by Tchaikovsky), as well as the line "Visions of sugar plums danced in their heads," from Clement C. Moore's poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas

A Visit from St. Nicholas

"A Visit from St. Nicholas", also known as "The Night Before Christmas" and "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" from its first line, is a poem first published anonymously in 1823 and generally attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, although the claim has also been made that it was written by Henry...

," better known as "Twas the Night Before Christmas."

Sugar plums have also gained widespread recognition through the poem "The Sugar Plum Tree" by Eugene Field

Eugene Field

Eugene Field, Sr. was an American writer, best known for his children's poetry and humorous essays.-Biography:...

. The poem begins "Have you ever heard of the Sugar-Plum Tree? 'Tis a marvel of great renown!"