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Dessert

Damson Preserves

Preserves made from damsons, mutton suet, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and sugar work together. They rank in the top 34% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 726 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Damson Preserves

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Place damsons in stone jars and cover with a plate.

  2. Set jars in a cool oven for several hours or overnight.

Seal the jars

  1. Pour melted mutton suet into each jar to a depth of ½ inch.

  2. Insert corks and cover with bladder or wash‑leather.

Sugar and syrup

  1. For sweeter preserves, layer fruit and sugar alternately in jars and shake well.

  2. If the mixture reduces, reserve one jar for filling up the rest quickly.

  3. Cook the fruit alone until almost done, then add powdered sugar and return to the oven until syrup thickens.

  4. Bake the fruit until half done, then add 12 ounces of sugar for each pound of fruit.

  5. Pour off syrup, boil it sharply, then simmer until rich and thick.

  6. Pour syrup over the fruit in jars and seal when cold.

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. Mutton + sugartop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together726 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Damsons
Provide the fruit that forms the body and flavour of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as syrup, thickens and helps preserve it.
Melted mutton suet
Forms a fat layer over the fruit that seals out air.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup sharply, then simmer until thick. Boiling concentrates the sugar so the syrup thickens and sets around the fruit. Simmering afterwards builds richness without scorching the sugar, which would spoil the flavour.

“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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