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Dessert

Dried Cherries

A preserved cherry dessert made by drying cherries in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,598 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Dried Cherries

Oven, in the book's wordsA very moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the cherries

  1. Stone the cherries.

  2. Sprinkle the cherries with powdered sugar.

  3. Spread the cherries on flat dishes and leave overnight.

  4. In the morning, gently pour off any syrup that has formed and weigh the fruit.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a rich syrup using equal weight of sugar and cherries, wetting the sugar with cherry juice and just enough water to dissolve it.

  2. Bring the syrup to a boil.

  3. Add the cherries to the boiling syrup and scald them.

  4. Remove the cherries gently and let the syrup boil for fifteen minutes, skimming constantly.

Dry and store

  1. Spread the cherries in tin pans and place them in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  2. Gradually add the syrup and turn the cherries until dry, for several days.

  3. Once cool, store the cherries in glass jars and cover tightly.

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 + cherrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 becomes chewy and concentrated as moisture is drawn out.
Sugar
Forms a rich syrup that penetrates the fruit and preserves it through drying.
Powdered sugar
Draws juice out of the cherries overnight, starting the preserving process.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup and scalding the cherries. Sugar must be concentrated enough to draw water out of the fruit and resist spoilage. Gentle handling keeps the cherries whole, and skimming removes impurities that would otherwise cloud the syrup.

“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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