To Dry Cherries the Best Way
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the cherries
Put the cherries in a preserving pan with a little water and heat until scalding hot.
Remove the cherries and let them dry.
Candy with sugar
Layer the cherries in the pan, sprinkling sugar between each layer.
Let them sit to melt, then heat the pan until scalding hot again.
Repeat this process three times with the sugar.
Drain the cherries from the syrup.
Dry and store
Lay the cherries out to dry on dishes in the sun or on a stove.
Once dry, dip the cherries in cold water.
Dry the cherries on a soft cloth.
Set the cherries in the sun or on a stove again to dry thoroughly.
Store the cherries in a box with layers of white paper in a dry place.
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; scalding and drying concentrate their flavour and firm the skin for preserving.
- Double-refined sugar
- Draws water out of the fruit and preserves it, giving the cherries sweetness and a candied texture.
The step that matters
Repeated scalding with sugar. Each round of heating and sitting in sugar draws moisture out of the cherries through osmosis. If the cherries are not heated fully or the sugar is not repeated, they will stay wet and spoil sooner.
“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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