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Brandied Cherries

A preserve of sweet cherries steeped in brandy and syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Brandied Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Remove the stems from the cherries, or clip them within an inch of the fruit.

  2. In a preserving kettle, combine the sugar and water; bring to a boil and skim the syrup until clear.

  3. Scald the cherries in the syrup for 2-3 minutes without breaking the skins.

  4. Remove the cherries with a skimmer and spread them on dishes to cool.

Make the brandy syrup

  1. Make additional syrup by boiling 1 pound of sugar with ½ pint of water or the thin syrup used for scalding until clear; cool it.

  2. Once cold, mix the syrup with an equal quantity of brandy.

Bottle and seal

  1. Place the cherries in wide-mouthed bottles, pour the syrup over them, cork tightly, and seal the corks with melted resin and wax.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Syrup + brandytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together561 recipes

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

Sweet cherries
Provide the fruit that is preserved and flavoured by the syrup and brandy.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
French brandy
Adds alcohol and flavour, helping to preserve the cherries.

The step that matters

Scalding the cherries without breaking the skins. Brief heating in hot syrup softens the fruit so it absorbs sugar, but overheating or boiling splits the skins, letting flesh leak out and spoil the appearance and texture.

“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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