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Dessert

Brandied Cherries

A preserve of sweet cherries soaked in brandy and sweetened with a clear syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Brandied Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

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

Make the syrup and scald the cherries

  1. Combine the sugar and water in a preserving kettle.

  2. Boil the mixture 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 a syrup with 1 pound of sugar and ½ pint of water.

  2. Boil the syrup until clear and cool.

  3. Once cool, mix the syrup with an equal quantity of French brandy.

Bottle and seal

  1. Place the cherries in wide‑mouthed bottles, pour the syrup over them, and cork tightly.

  2. Seal the bottles by dipping the corks in 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 + 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

Large sweet cherries
Provide the fruit that is preserved, keeping its flavour and shape in syrup.
Sugar
Forms the syrup that sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it.
French brandy
Adds aroma and alcohol that helps keep the preserved cherries stable.

The step that matters

Scald the cherries without breaking the skins. Brief heating in hot syrup firms the flesh and helps the cherries hold their shape. Overheating or boiling hard can split the skins, letting juice escape and the fruit turn soft.

“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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