Spiced damson jam

Our damson tree had an unusually large crop of fruit this year (kilos and kilos!), with very few worms, so I decided to make a batch of jam.

The recipe below details what appears to have worked well. It was adapted from a plum jam recipe found in the book Jams & Chutneys: Preserving the harvest by Thane Prince (IBSN 978-1-4053-2954-5; I’d also recommend the orange and beetroot chutney recipe from this book) although the original recipe was for about half the quantity and gave the preparation time as an implausible 20 mins.

These damsons are ‘merryweather’ variety, which are sweet enough to eat as fruit, although noticeably sharper than a typical Victoria plum.

Given that plums and damsons have a relatively high pectin content, I was worried about over setting (which can lead to the formation of a plum ‘cheese’ instead of a jam). On the other hand, I was also worried that a lengthy boil might have degraded the pectin, but it seems to have worked well.

Taste test of a left over amount of jam with cream on scones (scones made as per the previous post) was favourable.

Crumble

Of course, another great autumn dish is to use up fruit by making crumbles; a crumble topping is very tolerant of ingredient proportions but, as the crumb, I use:

• 100 g sugar
• 100 g butter
• 150 g plain flour

Then add:

• 100 g jumbo oats
• 30 g chopped pecan nuts

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Extra shots

• Damson cobbler recipe
  https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/damsoncobbler_70309
• A resource for all things preserving
  https://nchfp.uga.edu/