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Dessert

Pickled Cherries

A preserved fruit made by soaking cherries in a vinegar and sugar brine with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickled Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stone the cherries.

Make the pickle

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, sugar, and spices in a muslin bag.

  2. Boil the mixture together.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the cherries.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Provide the fruit that is softened and flavoured by the pickling liquid.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that sours the liquid and helps preserve the fruit.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the pickling liquid.
Cloves
Adds a strong, warm aroma that carries into the fruit.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma to the spiced liquid.

The step that matters

Pour the hot mixture over the cherries. Boiling the vinegar, sugar, and spices first dissolves the sugar and draws flavour out of the spice bag. Hot liquid also penetrates fruit more readily than cold, so the cherries take up the pickling flavour more evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, clove. 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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