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Dessert

Excellent Damson Cheese

A preserved cheese made from damsons, sugar, and their juice, cooked until dry and set.

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 ↓

Excellent Damson Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Drain off the juice from the damsons, then skin and stone them.

  2. Pour back ⅓ to ½ of the juice into the damsons.

Make the cheese

  1. Weigh the damsons and boil them over a brisk fire until they form a dry paste.

  2. Add 6 ounces of pounded sugar for each pound of plums and stir until dissolved.

  3. Boil the mixture again, stirring continuously, until it leaves the pan dry and adheres to the spoon.

  4. To test, it should not stick to your fingers when lightly touched.

  5. Quickly press the mixture into pans or molds.

Store

  1. Once completely cool, cover with a paper dipped in spirit and tie another layer over it.

  2. 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 + 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 pectin and pulp that set into a firm, sliceable paste.
Pounded sugar
Sweetens the paste and helps preserve it while it thickens.

The step that matters

Boiling until the mixture leaves the pan dry. Sugar and fruit must be cooked down far enough to concentrate the pectin and sugar so the paste sets firm. Undercooking leaves it soft and sticky, while overcooking can scorch it and make it hard.

“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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