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Preserve

Morello Cherries

Morello cherries are pricked, sugared, simmered in red currant syrup, packed into glasses, and sealed with brandy paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and brandy work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 105 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Morello Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Pick and wipe the cherries.

  2. Prick each cherry four or five times with a small needle.

  3. Sprinkle half of the sugar over the cherries and let them sit for 18 hours.

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the remaining sugar in red currant juice in a pan over medium heat and boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Skim the syrup.

  3. Add the cherries with their sugar to the syrup and simmer for 5 minutes without boiling.

  4. Remove the cherries and place them in glasses.

  5. Boil the syrup until thick.

Pot and seal

  1. Pour the syrup over the cherries and let it cool.

  2. Cover the glasses with brandy paper.

  3. Seal with paste.

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. Red currant + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + red curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Sugar and brandy 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

Morello cherries
Provide the main fruit, with flesh that softens and holds its shape in syrup.
Loaf sugar
Draws moisture out of the cherries and, once dissolved, sweetens and preserves the fruit.
Red currant juice
Forms the base of the syrup, adding tartness and acidity that balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup until thick. Sugar concentration must be high enough to preserve the fruit. If the syrup is under-reduced it may ferment or spoil, and over-boiling makes it too stiff as it cools.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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