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Dessert

Preserved Cherries

Preserved cherries are sweetened with sugar syrup, boiled, then sealed with brandy.

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 ↓

Preserved Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the cherries

  1. Remove the stones from the cherries using the stalk.

  2. If necessary, use a pen to push the stone out gently.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Boil the sugar with water until it reaches a nearly barley sugar consistency.

  2. Add the cherries to the syrup.

  3. Press the cherries down gently with a skimmer.

  4. Boil the cherries until the juice is well extracted, about 10 minutes or longer depending on the quantity.

  5. Skim the syrup well.

  6. Transfer the cherries to an earthen pan until the next day.

  7. Drain the syrup.

  8. Boil the syrup until it thickens.

  9. Return the cherries to the syrup.

  10. Boil for a short time.

Pot and seal

  1. Transfer the cherries to pots.

  2. Let them cool.

  3. Cover the cherries with paper dipped in brandy.

  4. Tie them down.

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

Cherries
Provide the fruit that is cooked and preserved in the sugar syrup.
Sugar
Forms the syrup that sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar to a nearly barley sugar consistency. Sugar syrup must reach a high enough concentration to preserve the fruit. Under-boiled syrup dilutes the cherries and can spoil, while overcooked syrup turns hard and brittle.

“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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