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Cerises À L'eau-de-vie

Preserved cherries steeped in brandy with sugar, cloves, and cinnamon, then sealed and aged for six months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Cerises À L'eau-de-vie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Remove the stems from the cherries and place them in a bowl.

  2. Crush the cherries by hand and break the pits.

  3. Add the sugar to the crushed cherries and simmer gently until reduced to a third, achieving a syrupy consistency.

Steep

  1. Pour the mixture into a ceramic or glazed pot.

  2. Add the brandy, cloves, and cinnamon to the pot.

  3. Seal the pot and let it sit for 6 months before using.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Brandy + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Brandy + clovetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cherries
Supplies the main fruit flavor and juice that mixes with the brandy.
Sugar
Sweetens the cherry juice and thickens it into a syrup as it reduces.
Brandy
Extracts flavor from the fruit and spices and acts as the preserving base.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor that deepens during the long rest.
Cinnamon stick
Adds sweet, woody aroma that slowly infuses into the liquor.

The step that matters

Simmer the cherries and sugar gently. Gentle heat reduces the mixture to a syrup without scorching the sugar or cooking off the delicate fruit flavor. Vigorous boiling can burn the sugar and make the syrup taste bitter.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Cardamomfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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