Skip to main content
Dessert

Pickled Cherries

A preserve of cherries soaked in a vinegar, sugar, and spice mixture.

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

Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Pickled Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pickling liquid

  1. Select sound, large cherries.

  2. In a pot, combine vinegar, sugar, and spices; heat and boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour the mixture into a covered stoneware vessel and let it cool completely.

Pack and store

  1. Pack the cherries into jars and pour the cooled vinegar mixture over them.

  2. Cork the jars tightly and store; they are ready to use almost immediately.

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 + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,415 recipes
  5. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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
Provide the fruit, which softens slightly and absorbs the flavour of the pickling liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its sharp flavour and helps preserve the fruit.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickling liquid.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Let the vinegar mixture cool completely. Pouring hot liquid over the cherries would soften and partly cook the fruit, changing its firm texture. Cooling the liquid first keeps the cherries intact while they absorb the flavour.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, clove. 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 pickled cherries recipes

Sweet 6 See all 86 →

You might also like

Clove CakeClove Cake53 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes