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Damson Cheese
Mrs. J. H. Mead.
Twelve pounds of damsons; put them into the oven; when they are soft take out the stones, crack them, and then blanch the kernels, then add three and a-half pounds of lump sugar; boil about three hours; wet the moulds before using them; weigh the damsons before they are put in the oven.
A fruit cheese is a stiff, sliceable fruit paste, and damson is its classic form. The problem here is not the fruit but the instruction to crack the stones and add the kernels, which is why this version should not be followed.
- Why the kernels are the problemDamson stones, like those of other Prunus fruits and like bitter almonds, contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the kernel is crushed, chewed or wetted. A few kernels were once used for their almond flavour, but the recipe calls for the kernels of every stone from twelve pounds of fruit, with no count and no measured limit. Boiling reduces free cyanide but does not make an open-ended dose of kernels safe.
- Blanching does nothing to help"Blanch the kernels" here means loosening and slipping off the brown skins in hot water, exactly as with almonds. It is a cosmetic step; the amygdalin is in the kernel flesh, not the skin.
- Sugar ratio and keepingSugar ratio -- Three and a half pounds of sugar to twelve pounds of fruit is just under a third of the fruit weight, far below the near-equal weights modern preserving uses. Nineteenth-century fruit cheeses relied on very long boiling to drive off water rather than on sugar concentration.
- Lump sugarLump sugar was refined loaf sugar broken into pieces, prized because it was cleaner than the brown sugars of the day. Ordinary granulated white sugar is its modern equivalent; nothing is gained by seeking out cubes.
- Weighing before the ovenThe final line is the practical heart of the method: the fruit is weighed whole and raw because it loses juice in the oven and again when stoned, and the sugar is proportioned to that original weight. Softening in the oven, rather than in a pan of water, was a way of loosening the stones without adding liquid that would then have to be boiled off.
- MouldsWetting the moulds lets the set paste be turned out without sticking. Such cheeses were commonly set in small straight-sided pots or shallow bowls so the cheese could be unmoulded whole and cut in slices at table, often with cold meat or hard cheese.
- If you want to make damson cheeseUse a current recipe that omits the kernels entirely and gives sugar quantities and a setting test. Almond flavour, if wanted, comes from almond extract.
"Cheese" in this sense has nothing to do with dairy: it describes any fruit pulp boiled down until it will set firm enough to turn out of a mould and slice, the same family as Spanish membrillo and English quince cheese. Damsons, small dark plums of the Prunus domestica group long grown in English hedgerows and orchards, were the favourite fruit for it because their skins and high acidity give a stiff, sharp paste that cuts cleanly. Cracking the stones for their kernels was a familiar enough practice in nineteenth-century preserving, used to lend a bitter-almond note to plum jams, cherry brandies and ratafias, and it appears in cookbooks on both sides of the Atlantic well into the twentieth century, long after the chemistry of amygdalin was understood. The attribution to Mrs. J. H. Mead looks like that of a community-subscription cookbook, the sort of book in which recipes came in over the signatures of the women who contributed them and were printed much as they were written, kitchen shorthand and all.