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Preserved Damsons

A method for preserving plums (damsons) in sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and plum are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,313 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Preserved Damsons

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and enough water in a preserving kettle to dissolve the sugar.

  2. Boil until it forms a syrup, then pour it over the plums.

Soak the plums

  1. Let the plums sit overnight and repeat the process the next morning.

Cook and jar

  1. On the third day, combine everything in the kettle and boil until the plums are cooked through.

  2. Remove the fruit with a skimmer and boil the syrup until thick.

  3. Pour the thick syrup over the fruit and transfer to small jars for storage.

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

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + plumtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration in the syrup, helps preserve it.
Plums
Is the fruit being preserved; it softens during cooking and takes up the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thick. Sugar concentration drives preservation. The syrup must reach a high sugar level by evaporating water, so under-boiling leaves it too dilute to keep the fruit stable in storage.

“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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