Name: Cherry Brandy
Ingredients: morello cherries or small black cherries; brandy (or whiskey, gin, or spirit distilled from the lees of wine)

Cherry Brandy

Ingredients

morello cherries or small black cherries
brandy (or whiskey, gin, or spirit distilled from the lees of wine)

Directions

Prepare

Pick the cherries from the stalks.
Fill the bottles nearly to the necks with cherries.
Top off the bottles with brandy.

Steep

Seal and let sit for three weeks.

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

Morello cherries or small black cherries: Supply the fruit flavour and colour that the spirit draws out during steeping.
Brandy: Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour, colour and sweetness from the cherries over time.

“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.