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Plum or Damson Jam

Jam made from plums or damsons cooked with sugar and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Plum or Damson Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the fruit.

  2. Weigh the fruit and place it in a pan with the water.

Cook the fruit

  1. Simmer gently until the fruit is well broken down, stirring to prevent burning.

  2. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.

  3. Boil quickly until the setting point is reached.

Jar and store

  1. Allow to cool slightly, then stir gently and pour into prepared jars.

  2. Cover with waxed tissue, and when completely cold, tie down, label, and store.

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

Plums or damsons
Supply the fruit flavour, natural pectin and acid that help the jam set.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam, helps it set and preserves it by binding water.

The step that matters

Boil quickly until the setting point is reached. Setting depends on the mixture reaching the right concentration of sugar and pectin. Boiling too little leaves the jam runny, while boiling too long can make it stiff and dull in flavour.

“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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Damson 6Apricot 5Black 4Green Gage 3Mirabelle 3 See all 63 →

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