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Dessert

Damson Preserves

A preserve made by cooking damsons with sugar and water until soft.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Damson Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Wipe damsons with a damp cheesecloth and prick each fruit five or six times with a large needle.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by boiling ¾ the weight of the damsons in sugar with water, using 1 cup of water for each pound of sugar.

  2. Once the syrup reaches boiling point, skim it and add the damsons a few at a time to maintain their shape.

Cook and jar

  1. Cook until the damsons are soft.

  2. Transfer the preserves into glass or stone jars.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Damsons
Supply the main fruit flavour and body, and natural pectin that helps the jam set.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam, preserves the fruit and helps it thicken as it cooks.

The step that matters

Adding the damsons to the boiling syrup. Add the damsons a few at a time so the syrup keeps boiling. Too much fruit at once cools the syrup and stops it boiling, so the fruit cooks unevenly and loses its shape.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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