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Dessert

Brandied Cherries or Berries

Fruit preserved in a sugar syrup and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Brandied Cherries or Berries

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by combining 1 pound of sugar and ½ cup of water in a pot.

  2. Heat the mixture to boiling, stirring to prevent burning.

  3. Pour the warm syrup over the fruit and let it stand for 1 hour.

Cook the fruit

  1. Transfer everything to a preserving kettle and heat slowly.

  2. Boil for 5 minutes, then remove the fruit with a perforated skimmer.

  3. Boil the syrup for an additional 20 minutes.

Add brandy and seal

  1. Add 1 pint of brandy for every 5 pounds of fruit and pour it over the hot berries.

  2. Seal the 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

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

Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, boiled into syrup, helps preserve it.
Fruit
Provides the main flavor and texture of the finished dish.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor, and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup for an additional 20 minutes. Cooking the sugar syrup long enough concentrates it so it can preserve the fruit. Boiling the fruit separately first keeps it from breaking down while the syrup thickens.

“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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