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Dessert

Damson or Plum Cheese

A preserved cheese made from ripe damsons or plums, sugar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and brandy work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 168 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Damson or Plum Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Preheat your oven.

  2. Place the ripe fruit in a stone jar and bake until soft.

  3. While warm, skin and stone the fruit, then rub it through a colander to extract the juice.

Make the paste

  1. In a preserving pan, combine the fruit pulp with sugar, using ½ pound of sugar for each pound of pulp.

  2. Boil quickly, stirring continuously until it becomes a stiff paste.

  3. If desired, stir in some blanched fruit kernels.

Set and store

  1. Remove the paste and press it into moulds or shallow pots rinsed with brandy, about 1¼ inches thick.

  2. Let it cool for several hours, then cover with brandied paper and store in a dry place.

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 + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together168 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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 or plums
Provide the fruit pulp that forms the body and flavour of the cheese.
Sugar
Sweetens the paste and, as it thickens, helps it set into a firm, sliceable cheese.

The step that matters

Boil quickly while stirring continuously. Sugar and fruit pulp can scorch on the bottom of the pan if left unstirred, and the paste must reach a stiff consistency to hold its shape when cooled.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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