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Dessert

Pickled Cherries

Pickled cherries preserved in a spiced vinegar and sugar solution.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove 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

Spice the vinegar

  1. Bruise all the spices.

  2. Boil the bruised spices in the white vinegar.

  3. Pour the warm vinegar over the cherries.

Prepare and pickle the cherries

  1. Cut off half of the stalks from the cherries.

  2. Prick each cherry in three or four places.

  3. Pickle the cherries when ripe; they will be ready for use around Christmas.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  4. Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White pepper + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Morella cherries
The fruit being preserved; it takes on the spiced, sharp flavour of the vinegar.
White vinegar
Acidic preserving liquid that carries the spice flavour and keeps the fruit from spoiling.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the pickling liquid.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the pickling liquid.
White pepper
Adds a gentle, sharp spice note to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Prick each cherry in three or four places. The skin of a whole cherry is a barrier, so pricking lets the spiced vinegar penetrate to the flesh. Without it the flavour stays mostly on the surface, and the fruit is less evenly seasoned.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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