Damson Pie: myths made real
For years one of the items in the top ten of my bucket list was to taste one of the South's legendary desserts, a pie made from the heirloom blue purple damson plum. I quoted one of the pie's SC devotees: John Bigham of Chapin SC wrote, “there is no more delicious plum in South Carolina than the damson, which is well-known to people living in Fairfield, Chester, York, Lancaster and border counties in North Carolina.” Bigham observed that the damson “makes the best pies in the world.” So I vowed to make one.
Some of you are no doubt asking what is a damson.
It is an ancient variety of Prunus domestica thought to have developed from the wild sloe. Antiquarians believed it to have originated in the vicinity of Damascus in the middle east, but the fruit was found widely in Europe in the historical era. Damson has come to designate a broad range of purple plums, from small rich tasting early season varieties to large, late season sorts. All varieties shared yellow green flesh that has a signature flavor combining intense sugar with astringency. Most are roundish with a slight point at one end. Most have a purple blue skin with a lavender bloom. They cannot be dried as a prune. They invariably contain a deeply furrowed stone at the heart of the fruit. Transported from Europe to the various colonies of North and South America, the damson was the favorite plum of Anglo-America settlers, the green gage coming a decided second in preference. In traditional foodways the damson plum was cooked. Plum jam, baked damsons, pickled, or preserved. Because the stone is so adherent in the flesh, the plums were often initially processed whole, and the stones removed (if they were removed) after cooking.
During the nineteenth century, pomologists began an intensive efffort to develop damson strains with greater size than the original small original, greater sweetness, so that the fruit could be eaten out of hand, and later season maturation. There was an old European strain called the white winter damson because of its late ripening that became an established American variety. The Shropshire Damson was much larger than the standard small fruit that was the type commonly associated with 'damson.' Because of a vulnerability to fire blight—a scourge that wiped out many damson orchards in the South in the 1950s—much recent breeding has attempted to instill disease resistance in the plum trees.
As you see from the recipe below it takes damson conserves to make a pie. Fortunately one of my fb friends June Taylor is a virtuoso maker of damson preserves. I bought two jars. In December 20, 2019, Luci began making Christmas pies: cherry, pumpkin, mincemeat. It was time to act. I am nowhere near as good a baker as Luci, but you don't get better by sitting on your hands. So, that afternoon I made a damson pie. Above you will see a mythological creature in the flesh. Sometime soon I will be able to confirm or disconfirm whether damson "makes the best pies in the world."