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Dessert

Damson Jelly

A sweet preserve made by cooking damsons and optional plums, then reducing the juice and adding sugar.

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 Jelly

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Bake the damsons in a very slow oven or boil them in a pan of water until soft.

  2. Pour off the clear juice from the fruit, strain, and weigh it.

  3. Boil the juice quickly without sugar for 25 minutes.

Add sugar and set

  1. Remove from heat and stir in 10 ounces of sugar for each pound of juice.

  2. Stir often before adding sugar and constantly afterwards.

  3. Boil quickly for 6 to 10 minutes, skimming off any scum.

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

Fine ripe damsons
Provide the fruit juice, along with natural pectin and tart acidity that help the jelly set.
Good sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, at high concentration, helps it set and keep its shape.

The step that matters

Boil quickly after adding the sugar. Sugar must dissolve fully before a hard boil, and the mixture must reach a rolling boil for the set to form. Constant stirring prevents sticking and scorching on the base of the pan.

“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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