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Dessert

To Preserve Damsons

This recipe preserves damsons by layering them with sugar, simmering, and making jam with the resulting juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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To Preserve Damsons

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove the stalks from the damsons.

  2. Layer the damsons in a stone jar, sprinkling fine pounded sugar between each layer.

  3. Securely tie the jar and place it in a deep saucepan of cold water.

Cook

  1. Slowly bring the water to a boil, then simmer until the damsons are soft but not broken (about 1 hour).

  2. Pour off the juice and boil it for about 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the juice through thick muslin or a jelly bag and pour it over the cooled damsons.

Pot and seal

  1. Carefully place the damsons into pots.

  2. Once the jam is cold, cover the pots with brandy papers and seal the tops with paper moistened with egg white.

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, pectin and tart flavour that form the body of the jam.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out juice, helping preserve the jam.

The step that matters

Simmer the jar gently until the damsons are soft but not broken. Bringing the water up slowly and simmering gently softens the fruit while keeping its shape. Rapid boiling would split the damsons and cloud the jam, and a loose texture would result.

“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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