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To Preserve Morelia Cherries

A method for preserving ripe Morelia cherries in sugar and currant juice syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

To Preserve Morelia Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Gather ripe Morelia cherries.

  2. Remove the stalks from the cherries.

  3. Prick each cherry with a new needle to prevent bursting.

  4. Weigh the cherries.

  5. Add 1½ times their weight in sugar, sprinkling some over them.

  6. Let the cherries sit overnight.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Dissolve the remaining sugar in ½ pint of currant juice.

  2. Heat the sugar and currant juice mixture.

  3. Add the cherries and any sugar that clings to them.

  4. Scald the cherries.

  5. Transfer the cherries to a bowl.

  6. Scald the cherries again the next day.

  7. Remove the cherries.

  8. Boil the syrup until thick.

  9. Pour the syrup over the cherries.

Check and finish

  1. Check the syrup in a couple of days.

  2. If the syrup is too thin, boil it gently until thickened.

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 + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Morelia cherries
Provide the fruit, which is preserved whole in the sugar syrup.
Sugar
Draws moisture out of the fruit and sets the syrup, preserving the cherries.
Currant juice
Forms the liquid base of the syrup that the sugar dissolves into.

The step that matters

Pricking each cherry. Pricking with a new needle lets the cherry skin release pressure and keeps it from bursting during scalding. Without it, the fruit splits and loses its shape in the syrup.

“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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