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Damson Jelly

A fruit jelly made from damsons, bullaces or pale plums, and sugar.

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 ↓

Damson Jelly

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Bake the damsons and bullaces in a slow oven or boil them in a water bath until soft.

  2. Pour off the juice from the fruit, strain it, and weigh it.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the juice quickly without sugar for 25 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat, stir in 10 ounces of sugar for each pound of juice, and boil for an additional 6 to 10 minutes, skimming off any scum.

  3. Stir the mixture often before and after adding the sugar.

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

Damsons
Provide the fruit flavour and natural pectin that lets the juice set into jelly.
Bullaces or pale plums
Add more pectin and body to help the jelly set.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set firm and keep well.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice with sugar. Sugar must be added after the juice has boiled down, and the mixture needs a full rolling boil for the set to form. Stirring often keeps the sugar dissolved and prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan, which would spoil the flavour and colour.

“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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