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Dessert

Cherry Preserves

A sweet preserve made by cooking cherries with sugar, water, gooseberry juice, and raspberry juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Gooseberry and raspberry share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cherry Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine sugar, water, gooseberry juice, and raspberry juice.

  2. Heat the mixture until the sugar melts and it begins to boil.

Cook and jar

  1. Add the cherries and cook over low heat for about 1 hour, skimming off any scum.

  2. Once cooked, transfer the cherries to jars and let them cool completely before sealing.

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. Gooseberry + raspberrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together20 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Sugar + raspberrytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,101 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + gooseberrytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together131 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cherries
Provide the main fruit body, flavour and texture of the preserves.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with the fruit's pectin and acid, helps the preserves set and keep.
Gooseberry juice
Adds acidity and natural pectin to help the preserves set.
Raspberry juice
Adds fruity aroma and extra flavour and colour.

The step that matters

Skim off the scum while the cherries cook. Scum is foam and impurities that rise during simmering. Removing it keeps the preserves clear and gives them a cleaner, fresher fruit flavour instead of a muddy taste.

Swap the gooseberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Red currantfits better
  4. Gooseberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raspberry. 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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