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Cherries in Brandy

Cherries preserved in brandy with cloves and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Cherries in Brandy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Wash the cherries in very cold water for 30 minutes, then drain them on a sieve.

  2. Weigh the cherries and measure ½ pound of sugar for every pound of fruit.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Clarify and boil the sugar until dissolved, then add the cherries.

  2. Boil the cherries gently two or three times, stirring with a skimmer.

Bottle and flavor

  1. Carefully transfer the cherries to bottles or glass jars.

  2. Add 12 cloves and ½ ounce of cinnamon tied in a linen bag to each jar.

  3. Once the sugar mixture is nearly cold, mix in 1½ pints of brandy and pour over the cherries.

  4. After two months, taste the cherries; if flavored sufficiently, remove the cloves and cinnamon, and seal the jars.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Brandy + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Brandy + clovetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 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 main fruit, whose flavor and texture carry the finished preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, dissolved into syrup, helps preserve the cherries.
Brandy
Adds alcohol that preserves the fruit and contributes its own warm flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling the cherries gently. Boiling too hard or too long can split the fruit and make it mushy. Gentle simmering keeps the cherries whole while the syrup soaks in.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Cardamomfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, cinnamon. 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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