Name: Fruit Preserved in Brandy
Ingredients: May-Duke or Morella cherries; strong pale brandy; loaf sugar

Why it works: Brandy and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Fruit Preserved in Brandy

Ingredients

May-Duke or Morella cherries
strong pale brandy
loaf sugar

Directions

Prepare and steeze

Cut off all but a ½ inch of the stalks from the cherries.
Place the cherries into glass jars and fill them with strong pale brandy.
Cork the jars carefully and tie some bladder over the top.

Store and sweeten

Store the jars in a dry place for six weeks.
After six weeks, uncork the jars and add ½ lb. of loaf sugar for every quart of brandy.
Cork the jars again and tie some bladder over the top.

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.

Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

May-duke or morella cherries: Provide the fruit flavour and colour that the brandy takes on during steeping.
Strong pale brandy: Acts as the preserving liquid, keeping the cherries from spoiling while they steep.
Loaf sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the sharp, boozy edge of the brandy.

“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.