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Dessert

Pickled Cherries

A pickled cherry preserve made with sugar, cider vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickled Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the cherries in a jar.

  2. Boil the sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and mace for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour the boiling mixture over the cherries.

Pickle

  1. Cover the jar tightly and let it sit for a week.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 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
The main fruit; it softens slightly and absorbs the spiced syrup.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the fruit by drawing out moisture.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the fruit.
Powdered cinnamon
Adds a warm, sweet aroma to the syrup.
Mixed whole cloves
Adds a pungent, warm aroma to the pickling liquid.
Allspice
Adds a warm, mixed-spice aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Cover the jar tightly and let it sit for a week. The spices and acid need time to penetrate the fruit, so the flavour develops only with a long rest. Sealing the jar keeps the cherries submerged in the liquid and protected from air while they absorb it.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cider, vinegar, cinnamon, clove, allspice. 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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