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Dessert

Damson Preserves

A preserve made by boiling damsons with sugar and water.

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 and syrup

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

  2. Weigh the damsons and make a syrup by boiling ¾ of their weight in sugar with water, using 1 cup of water for each pound of sugar.

Cook the damsons

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

  2. Cook the damsons until soft, using two kettles for efficiency.

Jar the preserves

  1. 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
Provide the fruit flavour, tartness and natural pectin that help the preserves set.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and binds water, helping the preserves thicken and keep.

The step that matters

Adding the damsons a few at a time. Adding too much fruit at once cools the boiling syrup and slows the cooking, which can split or toughen the skins. Adding them gradually keeps the syrup boiling and helps the damsons hold their 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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