Skip to main content
Dessert

Brandied Cherries

A preserve of cherries steeped in brandy, sweetened with sugar and spiced with cloves and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Brandied Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Remove half the stems from the cherries and place them in a jar or bottle with a large neck.

  2. Add cloves and pieces of cinnamon.

  3. Mash ¼ pound of ripe cherries for each pound of the other cherries and add some raspberries.

  4. Squeeze out the juice from the mashed cherries and raspberries using a cloth.

Make the syrup

  1. For each pound of cherries, use ¼ pound of sugar and clarify it with a glass of water.

  2. Boil the sugar and water mixture down to the point of crystallization.

  3. Add the cherry juice to the syrup and boil it a dozen times.

  4. Once cooled, add 1 pint of brandy for each pound of cherries.

  5. Pour the mixture into jars and seal them well.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cinnamon + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Clove + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Ripe cherries
Provide the main fruit flavor and juice that becomes the base of the liquor.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit by binding water.
Brandy
Adds alcohol that preserves the fruit and carries the aroma of the spices.
Raspberries
Add extra fruit aroma and tartness to the mashed fruit juice.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup to the point of crystallization. Boiling the sugar and water down concentrates the syrup so it is thick and stable. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while going too far makes it crystallize.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Cardamomfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, sugar, brandy. 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.

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipes