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Dessert

Damson Jelly

A preserve made from damsons, sugar, water, and a mash of green apples, green gooseberries, and quince cores.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and quince work together. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Damson Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the damsons

  1. Combine 8 pounds of damsons, 8 pounds of fine sugar, and ½ pint of water in a large pot.

  2. Boil over gentle heat for 30 minutes until the skins break.

  3. Remove from heat and let sit for 1 hour, placing a weight on top to keep the damsons submerged in syrup.

  4. Repeat the heating and resting process two more times.

  5. For the final boil, cook until the mixture is a deep color where the skins are broken.

  6. Let cool, then drain off the syrup.

Make the pectin mash

  1. Boil a good quantity of green apples, green gooseberries, and quince cores until mashed.

  2. Strain the mash through a sieve.

Set and pot the jelly

  1. Combine equal parts of the strained jelly and the syrup in a pot.

  2. Boil gently until it sets.

  3. Pour the hot jelly into glasses or pots.

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. Apple + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + quincetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,444 recipes

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

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Damsons
Provide the main fruit flavour and, as the skins break, the colour and body of the jelly.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set by binding water and preserving the fruit.
Green apples
Add natural pectin and acidity that help the jelly gel.
Quince cores
Add concentrated natural pectin to support setting.
Green gooseberries
Add pectin and tartness that help the jelly set.

The step that matters

Boiling until it sets. Jelly sets when enough pectin, acid and sugar are concentrated together. Boiling too briefly leaves it runny, while boiling too long can darken the flavour and make it stiff.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, apple. 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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