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Preserve

To Preserve Damsons

A method for preserving damsons by cooking them with sugar and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 the fruit

  1. Wipe the damsons.

  2. Prick the damsons.

  3. Place the damsons in a deep pot.

  4. Add 1 pound of sugar to the damsons.

Make the syrup

  1. Set the pot in a 300°F (150°C) oven until the fruit is warm but not bursting.

  2. Drain the syrup from the damsons.

  3. Boil the syrup with another pound of sugar for 10-15 minutes.

  4. Pour the hot syrup over the damsons.

  5. Repeat boiling if necessary.

Seal the jars

  1. Cover with double tissue paper dipped in olive oil.

  2. 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 main fruit flavour and the body of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out moisture, thickening the syrup as it boils.
Olive oil
Coats the tissue paper that covers the preserve, helping seal the surface against air.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup with the second pound of sugar. Boiling concentrates the sugar so the syrup holds enough sugar to preserve the fruit. Boiling too briefly leaves it too dilute to keep well, so the 10-15 minute boil matters.

“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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