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Dessert

To Pickle Cherries

This recipe preserves cherries in vinegar and spices, then sweetens them with a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Pickle Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Pickle the cherries

  1. Leave about an inch of stalks on the cherries and place them in a jar.

  2. Cover the cherries with cold vinegar and let them stand for three weeks.

  3. Pour off two-thirds of the vinegar and replace it with fresh vinegar.

  4. Drain the cherries.

Make the pickle

  1. Boil the vinegar with coriander seed, mace, cayenne or white peppercorns, and bruised cochineals tied in muslin.

  2. Let the pickle cool completely before adding it to the cherries.

  3. After a month, the cherries will be ready to use.

Make the syrup

  1. To make syrup, boil the vinegar poured off from the cherries with 1 pound of sugar per pint, optionally infusing with fresh raspberries, cherries, or currants for three to four days.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + coriandertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Coriander + macetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together281 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Vinegar + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,415 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Cherries
Provide the fruit, which firms and flavours as it sits in the pickle.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that flavours the fruit and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the syrup and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cochineal
Gives the pickling liquid its red colour.
Coriander seed
Adds a warm, citrusy aroma to the pickle.

The step that matters

Let the pickle cool completely before adding it to the cherries. Hot liquid keeps cooking the fruit and softens its flesh, so cooling the pickle first helps the cherries stay firm.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, coriander, sugar, syrup. 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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