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Pickled Cherries

A pickled cherry preserve made with vinegar, sugar, cloves, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Pickled Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Combine the vinegar, sugar, cloves, and mace in a pot.

  2. Heat the mixture until it boils.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes, then remove from heat and let it cool.

Pack and seal

  1. Prepare small jars and fill them nearly full with cherries.

  2. Strain the cooled vinegar mixture over the cherries and seal the jars.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  3. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,415 recipes
  5. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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 that absorbs the brine and becomes tender and flavorful.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its sharp taste and helps preserve the fruit.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Whole cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Let the vinegar mixture cool before straining it over the cherries. Hot liquid softens the fruit and can cook it, leaving cherries mushy instead of firm. Cooling first keeps the texture intact while the brine still soaks in as it cools.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, clove. 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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