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Dessert

Cherries in Brandy

A preserve of cherries soaked in brandy with sugar.

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 ↓

Cherries in Brandy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Weigh the cherries and cut off half the stalks.

  2. Prick the cherries with a needle and place them in a jar or wide-mouthed bottle.

Macerate

  1. Pound ¾ cup of sugar and sprinkle it over the cherries.

  2. Fill the jar with brandy and seal it with a bladder.

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

Morello cherries
Provide the fruit and its juices, which mingle with the brandy and sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the liquor and draws juice out of the cherries as it dissolves.
Brandy
Acts as the preserving liquid, extracting flavour from the fruit over time.

The step that matters

Pricking the cherries. Pricking the skins lets brandy and sugar penetrate the flesh and release juice, so the fruit flavours the liquor evenly instead of staying firm and bland.

“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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