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Dessert

Brandied Morella Cherries

A preserve of ripe Morella cherries sweetened with sugar-candy and soaked in French brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 Morella Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off half the length of the stalks from the cherries.

  2. Gently place the cherries into clean, dry quart bottles with wide necks.

Add the liquids

  1. Add 4 ounces of sugar-candy to each bottle.

  2. Fill the bottles completely with French brandy.

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

Ripe morella cherries
Provide the fruit flavour and juice that combines with the brandy and sugar.
Pounded white sugar-candy
Sweetens the brandy and draws out cherry juice as it dissolves.
French brandy
Acts as the preserving liquid, flavouring the cherries and keeping the fruit submerged.

The step that matters

Fill the bottles completely with French brandy. Fruit left exposed to air can spoil or mould. Filling the bottle fully keeps every cherry submerged in alcohol, which helps preserve it.

“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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