Damson Cheese

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Ingredients 4 ingredients

Keep children and pets away from the hob and the oven, and keep oven gloves and a lid within reach.

Oven and hot trays. Use dry oven gloves for trays and dishes: a hot tray looks just like a cold one. Open the oven door away from your face and let the first rush of heat out.
Boiling water and steam. Turn pan handles inward, away from the edge of the hob. Lift lids away from you, and pour hot water away from your body: steam burns too.
Hot sugar. Hot sugar sticks to skin and burns far hotter than boiling water: don't touch or taste it. Keep a bowl of cold water close, and keep children away while it cooks.
Sharp knives. Cut on a board that doesn't slip (a damp cloth under it helps), and curl the fingers of the hand that holds the food.

Bake or boil the fruit in a stonejar, in a saucepan of water, or on a hot hearth.
Pour off some of the juice, and to every two pounds of fruit, weigh half a pound of sugar.
Set the fruit over a fire in the pan, let it boil quickly till it begins to look dry;
take out the stones and add the sugar, stir it well in, and simmer two hours slowly, then boil it quickly half an hour, till the sides of the pan candy;
pour the jam then into potting pans or dishes, about an inch thick, so that it may cut firm.
If the skins be disliked, then the juice is not to be taken out;
but after the first process, the fruit is to be pulped through a very coarse sieve with the juice, and managed as above.
The stones are to be cracked, or some of them, and the kernels boiled in the jam.
All the juice may be left in and boiled to evaporate, but do not add the sugar until it has done so.
The above looks well in shapes.