Name: Sweet Pickle Cherries
Ingredients: Cherries, pitted; 1 pint vinegar; ½ pound sugar

Why it works: Vinegar and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Sweet Pickle Cherries

Ingredients

Cherries, pitted
1 pint vinegar
½ pound sugar

Directions

Prepare

Pick and stone the cherries.
Cover the cherries with vinegar.

Pickle

For each pint of vinegar, add ½ pound of sugar.
Combine all ingredients in a kettle and boil until done.

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.

Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cherries: Main fruit that supplies the flavor and texture of the pickle.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the cherries.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

“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.