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Dessert

To Preserve Damfons

A method for preserving damsons by baking, boiling in sugar syrup, and storing in a dry place.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Preserve Damfons

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pick off the stalks from the damsons and prick them with a pin.

  2. Place them in a deep pot with 2 pounds of sugar and set in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until soft.

  3. Remove from the oven and let them sit for 2 days before boiling the syrup.

Make the preserves

  1. Boil 2 pounds of sugar with water until clear and thick.

  2. Add the damsons to the syrup and boil for a few minutes.

Pot and store

  1. Transfer to pots, cover with brandy paper, and tie a bladder over it.

  2. 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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Damsons (in the method)
Provide the main fruit flavour and the body of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, helps preserve it by drawing out water.

The step that matters

Boiling the damsons in the syrup. Only a few minutes of boiling keeps the fruit firm and its skins intact. Longer boiling breaks the fruit down and can make the preserve overly soft or sticky.

“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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