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Dessert

Cherries a TAllemande

A preserved cherry mixture flavored with cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, tarragon, and sweetened vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cherries a TAllemande

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the cherries in a bottle.

  2. Add cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and tarragon.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Boil the vinegar with brown sugar, then cool it.

  2. Pour the cooled vinegar over the cherries.

Macerate

  1. Cork the bottle and let the fruit macerate for two weeks.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Nutmeg + tarragontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Cinnamon + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together61 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

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

What each ingredient does

Morella cherries
Provide the main fruit, whose firm flesh holds up during long steeping.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the fruit and gives the sharp tang characteristic of the dish.
Brown sugar
Sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Cooling the vinegar before pouring. Pouring hot vinegar over fruit would soften the cherries and cook them, so letting the boiled vinegar cool first keeps the fruit intact for its two-week maceration.

Swap the tarragon

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Tarragonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, vinegar, sugar. 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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