A Second Way to Dry Cherries
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the cherries
Stone the cherries and place them in a preserving pan with a little water.
Heat the cherries until scalding hot, then transfer them to a sieve or cloth to dry.
Sugar and heat
Return the cherries to the pan, sprinkle half of the sugar between layers, and heat until scalding hot again.
Let the cherries cool, then repeat the heating and cooling process two more times.
Dry and store
Drain the cherries from the syrup and lay them out separately to dry.
Dip the cherries in cold water and dry them with a cloth.
Set the cherries in the hot sun to dry and store them in a dry place until needed.
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
- Form the fruit base that is dried and concentrated by the repeated heating and sugaring.
- Double-refined sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and draws out moisture, helping preserve the cherries as they dry.
The step that matters
Repeated heating and cooling with sugar. Sugar draws water out of the fruit through osmosis. Heating to scalding hot and cooling in stages lets the syrup penetrate gradually, so the cherries firm and preserve without collapsing or fermenting. Rushing the cycles can leave the fruit wet inside.
“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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