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Dessert

Damson, or Other Plum Cheese

A preserved plum cheese made from damsons, sugar, and sweet oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,313 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Damson, or Other Plum Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pass the damsons through a sieve to remove skins and stones.

Make the cheese

  1. Combine the fruit pulp and sugar in a pot and boil until it becomes quite stiff.

  2. Grease four dinner plates with a little sweet oil and pour the mixture into them.

  3. Place the plates in a warm area to dry until the cheese is firm.

Finish

  1. Once firm, remove from the plates and cut into desired shapes.

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

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

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, flavour and natural pectin that help the mixture set firm.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as it boils down, helps the mixture thicken and set into a firm paste.

The step that matters

Boiling the pulp with sugar until stiff. Boiling drives off water and concentrates the sugar and fruit pectin. If it is undercooked the cheese will stay soft and fail to hold its shape; overcooked, it can turn tough or sticky. Stop when it is quite stiff.

“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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