Small, tart, blue-black damsons cooked with sugar to a deep, ruby-dark set, the stones skimmed off as they rise to the surface, the finished jam spread thick on buttered bread or baked into a tart
Origin: Shropshire and the English Midlands
From the journey of Plum.
The damson is the plum of the English hedgerow and the cottage orchard: small, austere, and far too sharp to eat raw, but transformed by sugar and heat into one of the finest preserves the country makes. Botanically a subspecies of the European plum (Prunus domestica subsp. insititia), it takes its English name from the 'Damascene' plum, a nod to the fruit's ancient passage westward from the Levant, though the trees have grown wild and half-wild in Britain for so long that they belong utterly to the landscape of the Midlands and the Welsh Marches. The Shropshire and Worcestershire damson country, and the prune-damson orchards of the Lyth Valley in Westmorland, supplied not only the kitchen but the dye trade, for the deep purple juice was once used to colour cloth. Damson jam is autumn cooking at its most frugal and most rewarding: the fruit is so high in pectin and acid that it sets readily and keeps without difficulty. The one quirk of the method is the stones, which are not removed beforehand but left in and skimmed off with a slotted spoon as they float free during boiling, a small labour that rewards the cook with the faint almond note the stones impart. Cooked longer and drier, the same fruit becomes damson cheese, a firm, sliceable conserve once served with cold meats and port at Christmas. Few English preserves carry their region so plainly: a pot of damson jam is the taste of a Midland autumn sealed under wax.
The signature of traditional damson jam is the method with the stones: rather than laboriously stoning the small fruit beforehand, the damsons are cooked whole and the stones are skimmed off with a slotted spoon as they float free, which also lends the jam a faint almond note from the kernels. Always warn those eating it that a stray stone may remain. Cooked much longer and drier, without added water, the same fruit yields damson cheese: a firm, dark, sliceable conserve set in a mould, turned out and traditionally served in slices with cold game, hard cheese, and a glass of port at Christmas. Damson cheese keeps for years and was once a prized store-cupboard treasure of the Midland farmhouse.
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