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Dessert

Damson Preserves

A sweet preserve made by cooking damsons in a sugar syrup.

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

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

Make the syrup

  1. 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.

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

Cook and jar

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

  2. 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 that softens into the preserves and gives them their flavour and body.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, boiled into a syrup, helps set and preserve the preserves.

The step that matters

Add the damsons a few at a time. Adding the fruit gradually keeps the syrup at a steady boil. Too much fruit at once cools the syrup, so the damsons cook unevenly and can lose 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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