Name: Cherries
Ingredients: 4 quarts cherries; 1 lb sugar; 1 quart vinegar; spices (to taste)

Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cherries

Ingredients

4 quarts cherries
1 lb sugar
1 quart vinegar
spices (to taste)

Directions

Boil the spices with the sugar.
Pour the hot mixture over the cherries.

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.

Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 forms the body and flavor of the preserves.
Sugar: Sweetens the preserves and helps set their thick, spreadable texture.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the fruit flavor.

“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.