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Cherries, Compote of

A sweet cherry compote made with cherries, sugar, water, and optional brandy.

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 ↓

Cherries, Compote of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Choose large, ripe cherries and leave about an inch of stalk on each.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water, and boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the cherries and simmer for 3 minutes.

  3. Optionally, add brandy to the syrup.

Serve

  1. Serve the cherries with the stalks facing up.

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

Cherries
Provide the fruit, which softens and releases flavor as it simmers in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps the cherries keep their shape and gloss.
Water
Dissolves the sugar to form the syrup that the cherries cook in.

The step that matters

Simmer the cherries for only 3 minutes. Cherries hold their shape best when cooked briefly. Longer simmering softens the flesh and breaks the skins, leaving a mushy compote.

“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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