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Cherries, Ivet or Dry

Cherries preserved in clarified sugar syrup, optionally dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Cherries, Ivet or Dry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Cut a quill to make a round end.

  2. Hold the cherry in your left hand and push the quill into it by the side of the stalk.

  3. Pull the stone out with the stalk using the quill.

Preserve in syrup

  1. Put enough clarified sugar in a preserving pan for the cherries to swim.

  2. Boil the sugar until it reaches the blow stage, then add the prepared cherries.

  3. Boil the cherries for 5 to 10 minutes, keeping them submerged in the syrup.

  4. The next day, drain the syrup and reduce it by boiling.

  5. Add the cherries back to the syrup and boil for another 5 minutes.

  6. Repeat this process for four days, giving the cherries a few boils in the syrup each day.

Dry and store

  1. If dry cherries are desired, drain the syrup, spread them on sieves, and dry in a warm place, turning them daily.

  2. Store the dried cherries in prepared boxes or jars.

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

What each ingredient does

Cherries
Provide the fruit, which is firmed and preserved by repeated boiling in sugar syrup.
Clarified sugar
Forms the syrup that preserves the cherries and gives them their sweetness.

The step that matters

Keeping the cherries submerged while boiling. Parts of fruit left above the syrup can dry out, darken and spoil, so the cherries must stay covered. Repeated short boils in syrup gradually replace the fruit's water with sugar, which is what preserves it.

“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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