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Dessert

Excellent Damson Cheese

A preserved cheese made from damsons, sugar, and spirit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and spirit work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Excellent Damson Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the damsons

  1. Bake or stew the damsons until tender, then drain off the juice.

  2. Remove the skins and stones from the damsons.

  3. Return ⅓ to ½ of the juice to 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 sugar for each pound of damsons and stir until dissolved.

  3. Continue boiling while stirring until the mixture leaves the pan dry and sticks to the spoon.

  4. To test, lightly touch the mixture; if it doesn't stick to your fingers, it's done.

  5. Quickly press the mixture into pans or molds.

Store

  1. Once completely cool, cover with a paper dipped in spirit and tie another layer 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. Plum + spirittop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + spirittop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Damsons
Provide the fruit pulp and pectin that set the mixture into a firm, sliceable cheese.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps the paste thicken and keep its shape as it cools.

The step that matters

Boiling until the mixture leaves the pan dry. Stopping too early leaves too much water, so the cheese stays soft and may spoil; boiling too long makes it stiff and dry. The spoon and finger test show when enough moisture has evaporated.

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, spirit):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, spirit. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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