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Dessert

Damson Preserves

Preserves made from damson plums stewed with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and sugar 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 ↓

Damson Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Make an incision in each plum and steam them until the seeds can be easily removed.

  2. Weigh the plums and for every pound, use an equal amount of loaf sugar.

Make the jam

  1. Boil the sugar and skim off any foam.

  2. Add the plums to the boiling sugar and cook until tender and clear.

Jar and strain

  1. Remove the plums and place them in glass jars.

  2. Strain the syrup over the plums in the 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

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. Plum + sugartop 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

Damson plums
Supply the fruit flavour and natural pectin that helps the jam thicken as it cooks.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness, draws water out of the fruit, and helps the syrup set and keep well.

The step that matters

Cooking the plums until tender and clear. The plums must cook long enough to soften fully and release pectin, and the syrup must thicken as water evaporates. Stopping too early leaves the jam runny, while cooking too long makes it stiff and dull.

“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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