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To Preserve Cherries for Tarts

This recipe preserves cherries in a sugar syrup with brandy for use in tarts.

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 ↓

To Preserve Cherries for Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prick each cherry with a needle three or four times.

  2. Place the cherries in a dish and sprinkle sugar over them.

  3. Let the cherries sit overnight.

Make the syrup

  1. The next day, make a syrup by boiling water and adding the cherries for one day.

  2. Remove the cherries and boil the syrup until it reaches a strong consistency.

  3. Add a little brandy to the syrup and mix it with the cherries.

Store

  1. Once cooled, transfer the cherries to jars and cover them with bladder and leather.

  2. Store in a cool place.

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

Morella cherries
The main fruit, which the sugar and syrup preserve and flavor.
Sugar
Draws water out of the fruit and builds a thick syrup that helps preserve it.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warm, spirited flavor to the finished syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup to a strong consistency. Sugar concentration thickens the syrup and inhibits spoilage microbes. If the syrup is under-boiled and too dilute, it will not preserve the cherries well.

“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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