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Damson Preserves
With a sharp penknife, cut a longslit lengthwise in each damson. Spread in dishes and set in the sun till the seed comes out readily. Then boil till thoroughly done in a thick syrup made of as many pounds sugar as there are pounds of damsons.
Preserve green gage plums and other plums by the same recipe.--Miss P.
A one-to-one preserve of the simplest kind, from a period when sugar in equal weight was both the sweetener and the preservative. The only step that does not translate is the sun.
- Skip the sun-softeningFruit left in open dishes outdoors until the stones loosen invites flies, wasps and mould, and on a warm day it ferments. Slit the damsons as directed and either prise the stones out with the point of the knife or leave them in and lift them off the surface as they float free during boiling.
- Damsons are stubbornly clingstoneThat is the whole reason for the slit. If you cook them whole and skim instead, count the stones out, or warn whoever eats them.
- Pounds for poundsWeigh the fruit after stemming and use exactly that weight of sugar. For 2 lb damsons and 2 lb sugar, add about a cup of water to start the syrup so the sugar does not scorch before the fruit gives up its juice.
- "A thick syrup"Dissolve the sugar in the water over low heat, bring to a boil, then add the fruit. Undissolved sugar crystals on the pan side will seed the whole batch grainy; brush them down with a wet pastry brush.
- How long is "thoroughly done"Twenty-five to forty minutes of open boiling. Test at 220F on a thermometer, or spoon a little onto a chilled saucer and push it with a finger — it should wrinkle. Damson skins and stones are rich in pectin, so this set comes easily.
- SkimDamsons throw a heavy scum as they come to the boil. Take it off or the finished preserve will be cloudy.
- Green gages and other plumsFreestone plums need no slitting — halve and stone them. Gages are lower in acid than damsons; a tablespoon of lemon juice per 2 lb helps both the set and the keeping.
- Yield and storageTwo pounds of fruit and two of sugar give roughly five or six half-pint jars. The original gives no sealing instructions at all; for keeping at room temperature, follow current water-bath processing guidance, or refrigerate and use within a month.
Damsons — Prunus insititia, a small, oval, blue-black plum too astringent to enjoy raw — were grown in Virginia dooryards and in English gardens before that, valued for what they became when cooked. The name is generally traced to Damascus, by way of the medieval Latin prunum damascenum. Equal weights of fruit and sugar was one common preserving proportion of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when sugar was doing the work later done by sterile jars and pressure: enough of it, boiled in, made a product that would sit in a stone crock under a brandied paper all winter. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named and initialled Virginia housekeepers, is full of these terse, assumed-knowledge entries — "Miss P." saw no need to say how much water, how long, or how to seal.