Skip to main content
Dessert

Preserved Cherries

A sweet preserve made by boiling cherries with sugar and water, then sealed in brandy paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Preserved Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stone the cherries.

  2. Weigh the cherries.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Dissolve ¾ pound of loaf sugar in 1 pint of water.

  2. Add the cherries to the sugar solution.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Boil for 30 minutes until it begins to thicken.

Pot and seal

  1. Transfer to pots.

  2. Cover with brandy paper, sealing 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 + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Cherries
Form the fruit that is preserved and gives the finished dish its body.
Loaf sugar
Draws water out of the fruit and builds a thick syrup that helps preserve it, adding sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil for 30 minutes until it begins to thicken. Sugar concentration is what keeps the cherries preserved, so the syrup must be boiled enough to thicken. Stop when it begins to thicken, because over-reducing can make the syrup too stiff and sticky, while under-boiling leaves it too thin to protect the fruit.

“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.

More preserved cherries recipes

in Syrup 3 See all 89 →

You might also like

Brandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesBrandy CreamBrandy Cream21 recipesBrandy PuddingBrandy Pudding13 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes