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Dessert

To Preserve Damsons

A method for preserving damsons by boiling them with sugar and syrup, then sealing in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 35% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,483 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

To Preserve Damsons

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wipe and prick the damsons, then place them in a deep pot.

  2. Add 1 pound of sugar to the damsons and set in a 300°F (150°C) oven until warm, being careful not to burst them.

Make the syrup and fill the jars

  1. Drain the syrup and boil it with another pound of sugar for 10-15 minutes.

  2. Pour the hot syrup over the damsons and repeat boiling if necessary.

  3. Cover with double tissue paper dipped in olive oil and tie bladders over the jars.

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. Sugar + olivetop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,483 recipes

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

Sugar and olive barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,483 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 fruit and its tart flavour, which the sugar balances in the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out moisture, and helps preserve the fruit by binding water.
Good moist sugar
Adds moisture and a deeper, caramel-like sweetness to the preserve.
Olive oil
Coats the tissue paper so it seals the jar surface against air.

The step that matters

Pour the hot syrup over the damsons. The syrup must be hot and sugar-concentrated enough to penetrate the fruit and keep it preserved; if it cools or is too dilute, the fruit can spoil or ferment.

“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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