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Dessert

Brandy Cherries

Cherries preserved in brandy with sugar and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Brandy Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate the cherries

  1. Place the cherries in a bag and pour the white brandy over them.

  2. Let the cherries stand for 20 days.

Make the syrup and spice infusion

  1. Draw off the liquor and prepare a thick syrup with the crushed sugar.

  2. Mix the spices with one quart of the brandy and let it infuse for eight days.

  3. Filter the spice infusion and mix it with the drawn-off liquor.

Bottle and seal

  1. Place the cherries in wide-mouthed bottles and cover them with the liquor.

  2. Cork and seal the bottles.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Anise + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Coriander + anisetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together86 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Clove + anisetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Coriander + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Red sour cherries
Provide the main fruit flavor and tartness that the brandy extracts over time.
White brandy
Extracts flavor from the cherries and acts as the preserving alcohol.
Crushed sugar
Sweetens the thick syrup, balancing the tart cherries and brandy.
Ground cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the infused liquor.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the spice infusion.

The step that matters

Filter the spice infusion before mixing. Ground spices stay suspended and can cloud the liquor and add gritty texture if not filtered out fully. Filtering gives a clear, smooth result.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, sugar, clove, coriander, anise, cinnamon. 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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