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Preserve

Preserved Cherries

A method of preserving cherries by repeatedly boiling them in sugar syrup.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Remove the stones from the cherries by loosening them around the stalk with a knife and pulling them out.

Make the syrup and soak

  1. Boil the sugar and water together.

  2. Add the cherries and boil gently for about 10 minutes.

  3. Pour the mixture into a basin and let it sit for 24 hours.

  4. Drain the syrup.

  5. Boil the syrup again.

  6. Pour the syrup over the cherries.

  7. Repeat this process four times.

  8. Allow the cherries to sit for 24 hours between each boiling.

Finish and dry

  1. Add ½ lb. more sugar to the syrup.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes with the cherries.

  3. Wash the cherries in warm water.

  4. Place the cherries on a sieve to dry in the sun or a warm place.

  5. Dry them on a sieve in the stove.

  6. Dust the cherries with fine sugar.

  7. Brush them with a little syrup to glaze.

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

What each ingredient does

Cherries
Form the preserved fruit, which absorbs the syrup and holds its shape during repeated boiling.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, helps preserve it and draws out moisture.
Water
Dissolves the sugar into a syrup that carries sweetness into the cherries.

The step that matters

Repeated syrup boiling and resting. Each cycle of boiling and 24-hour rest gradually draws water out of the fruit and replaces it with sugar. Boiling too hard or skipping rests can split or shrivel the cherries and leave them less preserved.

“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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