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Dessert

Excellent Damson Cheese

A sweet, thick preserve made from damsons, sugar, and juice, cooked until it becomes a dry paste.

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 ↓

Excellent Damson Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Drain off the juice from the damsons, then skin and stone them.

  2. Pour back ⅓ to ½ of the juice into the damsons and weigh the mixture.

Make the cheese

  1. Boil the damsons over a brisk fire until they form a dry paste.

  2. Add 6 ounces of powdered sugar for each pound of damsons and stir off the heat until dissolved.

  3. Boil the mixture again, stirring constantly, until it leaves the pan dry and adheres to the spoon.

  4. If it does not stick to the finger when lightly touched, it is done.

  5. Quickly press the mixture into pans or molds.

Store

  1. Once cold, cover with a paper dipped in spirit, tie another paper over it, and store in a dry place.

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

Damsons
Provide the fruit body and flavor that the paste is built from.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the paste and, as it cooks down, helps it set into a firm cheese.

The step that matters

Boiling until the mixture leaves the pan dry. Stirring constantly and cooking until the paste pulls away from the pan removes enough water for it to set firm when cooled. Stopping early leaves a soft mixture that will not hold its shape, while overcooking can scorch the sugar and fruit.

“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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