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Fruit Preserved in Brandy

Cherries are preserved in brandy and sweetened with sugar after six weeks of storage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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

Directions

Prepare

  1. Choose some fine May-Duke or Morella cherries and cut off all but 4 inches of the stalks.

  2. Place the cherries in glass jars and fill them with strong pale brandy.

  3. Cork the jars carefully and tie some bladder over the top.

Steep and sweeten

  1. Store the jars in a dry place for six weeks.

  2. Uncork the jars.

  3. Add 4 pounds of loaf sugar for every quart of spirit.

  4. 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.

  1. 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 main fruit flavour and juice that mingles with the brandy during steeping.
Strong pale brandy
Preserves the cherries and extracts their flavour over the weeks of steeping.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the spirit and balances the brandy's sharpness.

“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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