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To Preserve Cherries

Preserves cherries by boiling with sugar and currant juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and red currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

To Preserve Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Weigh the cherries and stone them, saving the juice.

  2. Place the stoned cherries in a large pan.

  3. Sprinkle half the sugar over them.

  4. Let them sit for 1–2 hours.

  5. Transfer the cherries to a preserving kettle with the remaining sugar.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Boil, skimming until the fruit is clear and the syrup thick.

  2. For whole cherries, prick each one with a needle.

  3. Leave the stalks short.

  4. Use 5 pounds of cherries and 6¼ pounds of sugar.

  5. Spread the cherries on large dishes.

  6. Cover with a thick layer of powdered sugar, about 1¼ pounds of sugar for every 5 pounds of cherries.

  7. Alternatively, place them in a large tureen.

  8. Sprinkle with sugar.

  9. Cover.

  10. Let sit overnight.

  11. In the morning, pick and juice the currants.

  12. Mix the juice with the remaining sugar in a preserving kettle.

  13. Boil and skim the sugar mixture.

  14. Add the cherries and simmer for 30 minutes until clear.

  15. Remove the cherries one at a time and let them cool.

  16. If the sugar hasn't penetrated enough, return them to the syrup.

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 + red curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Morella cherries
Provide the fruit that is cooked until clear and candied through with sugar.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, drawn into the cherries, preserves them and thickens the syrup.
Red currants
Their juice adds tartness and acidity to the syrup, balancing the sweetness.

The step that matters

Simmering the cherries in the syrup until clear. Sugar must slowly replace the water in the fruit. Boiling too hard or too briefly can toughen the skins or leave the sugar unabsorbed, so the cherries stay cloudy or shrivel.

“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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