Why it works: Sugar and cherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,598 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Syrup for Fruit Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Seed the cherries and let them stand in a bowl overnight.
In the morning, press the cherries through a fine cloth dipped in boiling water.
Weigh the juice, add the sugar, and boil for 15 minutes, removing all the scum.
Bottle and store
Fill small, perfectly dry bottles with the syrup.
When cold, cork the bottles tightly, seal them, and keep them in a cool place, standing upright.
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.
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Sugar + cherrytop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,598 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Morello cherries
- Provide the main fruit flavour and the juice that becomes the syrup.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the juice and, when boiled, helps preserve the syrup.
The step that matters
Removing the scum while boiling. Scum rises as the juice boils and contains impurities and proteins that can cloud the syrup and spoil its clarity. Skimming it off during the 15 minutes keeps the syrup clear and clean-tasting.
“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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