Skip to main content
Dessert

Cerises À L’eau-de-vie

Preserved cherries soaked in brandy with sugar, mace, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mace and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Cerises À L’eau-de-vie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Choose the largest, light-colored cherries that are not too ripe.

  2. Remove the stems from the cherries, leaving about ½ inch of the fruit.

  3. Place the cherries in a jar.

Make the brandy infusion

  1. For each liter of brandy, add 3 ounces of sugar.

  2. Make a sachet with a little mace and crushed cinnamon, and place it over the cherries.

  3. Fill the jar with the prepared brandy and seal it tightly.

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. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  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 + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  5. Brandy + macetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,547 recipes

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

Fresh cherries
Provide the fruit flavor and color that the brandy takes on during infusion.
Brandy
Acts as the alcohol base that extracts flavor from the cherries and spices.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness and alcohol of the brandy.

The step that matters

Fill the jar with the prepared brandy and seal it tightly.. A tight seal keeps alcohol from evaporating and prevents outside air from spoiling the fruit. Sealing also holds the aromas in while the flavors slowly extract over time.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, sugar, 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.

More cherry brandy recipes

Black 4German 3 See all 70 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesBrandy CreamBrandy Cream21 recipes