The fruit is somewhat sour, clingstone, and very juicy. It can be eaten raw when fully ripe or cooked and made into pies preserves and jellies. Dried, these plums were a popular winter staple of indigenous peoples. French explorer Jacques Cartier remarked in his journal that he was presented with dried Canada plums by the St. Lawrence Iroquoians in his first expedition to Canada. Early settlers in the western U.S. and Canada also made use of these wild plums for dried fruit, as popularized by the autobiographical novel "On the Banks of Plum Creek", the fourth book in Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House on the Prairie" series.