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Dessert

Brandied Cherries

A preserved cherry dessert made by boiling cherries in sugar syrup and adding brandy.

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

Brandied Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and water in a pot to make a syrup.

  2. Heat to boiling, stirring to prevent burning.

  3. Pour the syrup over the cherries.

  4. Let them stand for one hour.

Cook and bottle

  1. Transfer the cherries and syrup to a preserving kettle.

  2. Heat slowly and boil for five minutes.

  3. Remove the cherries with a perforated skimmer.

  4. Fill a bottle two-thirds full with the cherries.

  5. Boil the syrup for twenty minutes.

  6. Add the brandy.

  7. Pour the scalding hot syrup over the cherries in the bottle.

  8. Seal the bottle.

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

Sugar
Dissolves into the water to form the syrup that sweetens and preserves the cherries.
Cherries
Provide the fruit that softens in the hot syrup and absorbs its sweetness and flavour.
Brandy
Adds alcoholic aroma and flavour and helps preserve the cherries in the bottle.

The step that matters

Pour the scalding hot syrup over the cherries in the bottle. The syrup must be boiling hot when it goes into the bottle so that it heats the fruit and drives out air. This helps the cherries keep well once sealed.

“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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