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To Pickle Cherries

A method for preserving cherries in vinegar with spices, optionally sweetened with sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Prepare 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. Wait a month until the cherries are ready to use.

Make the optional syrup

  1. Boil the reserved vinegar with 1 pound of sugar per pint, optionally infusing with fresh raspberries, cherries, or currants.

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. Mace + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 is preserved and flavoured by the pickle.
Cold vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid that softens and sharpens the fruit over time.
Coriander seed
Adds warm, citrusy aromatic flavour to the pickle.
Sugar
Sweetens the reserved vinegar when made into the optional syrup.

The step that matters

Let the pickle cool completely before adding it to the cherries. Adding hot pickle would soften the cherries and cook them, leaving them mushy instead of firm. Cooling first keeps the fruit intact.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, coriander, mace, sugar, syrup):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, coriander, mace, 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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