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Pickled Cherries

Pickled cherries are preserved in a vinegar, brown sugar, mace, and cinnamon brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and plum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 513 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Pickled Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Remove the stems from the cherries.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, mace, cinnamon, and brown sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture for a few minutes.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool, then pour it over the cherries.

Store

  1. Store the cherries in jars, ensuring to exclude air.

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 + plumtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Vinegar + plumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that flavours the brine and helps preserve the fruit.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and rounds out the flavour.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the pickling liquid.
Cinnamon
Adds a warm, sweet aroma that flavours the pickling liquid.
Morella cherries
The main fruit, which soaks up the spiced, sweet-sour liquid as it pickles.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before pouring it over the cherries. Hot liquid poured over fresh fruit softens it and cooks the flesh, so it loses firmness. Cooling first keeps the cherries intact while they absorb the flavour.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, plum. 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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