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Dessert

Damson Cheese

A chilled dessert made from damsons, gelatine, and soaked bread, served with custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Damson Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tin

  1. Grease a round cake tin with butter.

  2. Line the sides with strips of bread soaked in sweetened milk.

  3. Shape a round piece of bread to fit the bottom of the tin.

Make the filling

  1. Simmer the damsons and their juice in a saucepan until soft, then remove the stones.

  2. Return the fruit to the saucepan, sweeten to taste, and add the gelatine soaked in cold water. Stir until the gelatine is dissolved.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the tin and cover with another round of soaked bread.

  2. Place the tin under pressure until cold.

  3. Serve with custard made from custard powder, condensed milk, and water.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Sugar + condensed milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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, tartness and the bulk of the set filling.
Gelatine
Sets the fruit juice into a firm, sliceable cheese once cooled.
Strips of bread soaked in sweetened milk
Form the lining and cover that hold the fruit mixture in its shape.
Custard powder
Thickens the milk-based custard served alongside the cheese.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine fully before pouring. Gelatine only sets when it has completely dissolved into the hot fruit. Undissolved granules leave weak spots, so the cheese may not hold its shape when turned out.

“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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