Dried Cherries
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Remove the stalks and stones from the cherries using a quill.
Cook the cherries in syrup
Boil the sugar with water until it reaches the blown stage.
Add the cherries to the syrup and boil for a few minutes.
Set the mixture aside in an earthen pan until the next day.
Strain the syrup, add more sugar, and boil until it thickens.
Return the cherries to the syrup and boil for five minutes.
Set aside again for another day.
Repeat and dry
Repeat the boiling for two more days.
Drain the cherries.
Lay them on wire sieves to dry in a stove or a nearly cold oven.
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
What each ingredient does
- Cherries
- Provide the fruit that slowly takes on sugar and becomes chewy when dried.
- Sugar
- Draws water out of the fruit and preserves it, while sweetening the syrup.
The step that matters
Boiling the sugar to the blown stage. Sugar syrup must be concentrated enough to preserve the fruit and draw out its water. Too little boiling leaves the syrup thin and the cherries prone to spoiling, while overboiling makes the syrup hard and sticky.
“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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