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
Weigh the finest morella cherries and cut off half the stalks.
Prick the cherries with a new needle and place them in a jar or wide-mouth bottle.
Add sugar and brandy
Pound the sugar and strew it over the cherries.
Fill the jar with brandy and tie a bladder over the top.
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.
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Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Morella cherries
- Provide the fruit flavour and juice that the brandy and sugar draw out and preserve.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and draws moisture out of the cherries, helping form a syrup.
- Brandy
- Acts as the preserving liquid, keeping the cherries from spoiling while absorbing their flavour.
The step that matters
Pricking the cherries. Pricking with a clean new needle lets the brandy and sugar penetrate the fruit, which helps flavour develop and reduces the risk of the cherries splitting or spoiling unevenly.
“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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