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Morella Cherry Brandy

A brandy infused with ripe cherries, sweetened with sugar, optionally flavored with cherry or peach kernels.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and cherry work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 300 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Morella Cherry Brandy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Gather fine, ripe cherries on a dry day.

  2. Cut off the stalks to within an inch.

Bottle and steep

  1. Place the cherries in wide-necked quart bottles.

  2. Add 4 ounces of sugar for every pound of fruit.

  3. Distribute the sugar evenly among the cherries.

  4. Pour in 1 pint of brandy.

  5. Optionally, add cherry or peach kernels for flavor.

  6. Seal the bottles tightly and store in a dry 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. Brandy + cherrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together300 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + cherrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 main fruit flavor and aroma that the brandy takes up over time.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the fruit and brandy.
Brandy
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavor from the fruit and preserves the mixture.

Swap the cherry

The recipe marks cherry as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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