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Dessert

Morella Cherries

Preserved Morella cherries in a brandy and powdered sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and brandy 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 ↓

Morella Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stalks and leaves from the cherries, leaving about half an inch.

Make and pour the brandy mixture

  1. Mix 10 ounces of powdered sugar with 1 quart of brandy until dissolved.

  2. Pour the sugar-brandy mixture over the cherries in a glass jar.

Cover and keep

  1. Cover the jar tightly with leather and bladder, and keep it filled up.

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

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

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 fruit that gives the preserves their flavour and texture.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the brandy to sweeten the preserves and help preserve the fruit.
Brandy
Acts as the liquid that soaks the cherries and helps keep them preserved.

The step that matters

Keep the cherries fully covered. Fruit left exposed above the liquid can spoil or mould, so the jar must stay tightly covered and kept topped up with the sugar-brandy mixture.

“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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