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Dessert

Pickled Cherries

Pickled cherries are preserved in a vinegar and sugar brine with cloves, allspice, mace, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Do not stone the cherries or remove their stems.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine vinegar and sugar in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture.

  3. Skim off foam.

  4. Add spices tied in a bag.

  5. Simmer for 45 minutes.

Pack and seal

  1. Carefully remove cherries.

  2. Place cherries in a jar.

  3. Boil the liquid down for about an hour.

  4. Pour the liquid over the cherries.

  5. Seal the jars while hot.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cherries
Make up the fruit, holding their shape and texture in the finished pickle.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sugar and keeps the syrup tart.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and thickens it as the liquid reduces.
Ground cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic flavour to the syrup.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the syrup.
Ground ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Seal the jars while hot. Hot syrup and hot jars drive out air, and as the contents cool they contract and pull the lid down to form a vacuum seal. If the jars or liquid have cooled, the seal may not form properly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice, ginger):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice, ginger. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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