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To Preserve Cherries in Syrup

A method for preserving cherries by cooking them in a sugar syrup with white currant juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

To Preserve Cherries in Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Select clear, ripe cherries, remove stems and stones carefully.

  2. Make a syrup with sugar and mix in the cherries.

  3. Transfer the cherries to a pan and let them sit overnight.

Cook the syrup and cherries

  1. Boil the cherries for about 15 minutes, skimming off any foam.

  2. Drain the cherries and return the syrup and white currant juice to the pan.

  3. Boil until the syrup is reduced and slightly thickened.

  4. Add the cherries back in and boil for another 10 minutes.

Jar and seal

  1. Remove from heat and pour the cherries into small jars or wide-mouthed bottles.

  2. Pour the syrup over the cherries and seal the jars when cool.

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 + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Cherries
Form the fruit base, keeping their texture and flavour as they cook in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit by drawing out water.
White-currant juice
Adds tart acidity and fruity aroma that balances the sweet syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until reduced and slightly thickened. Boiling concentrates the sugar so the syrup holds the fruit well and resists spoilage. Under-reduced syrup is thin and may not preserve the cherries reliably.

“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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