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 ↓
Brandy Cherries
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the cherries
Cut the cherry stalks short.
Prick the cherries with a needle.
Sprinkle sugar over the cherries.
Make the syrup and scald
Make a syrup by boiling water and sugar until dissolved.
Pour the syrup over the cherries.
Scald the cherries in the syrup on the fire.
Rest and finish
Let them sit overnight.
Scald the cherries again.
Transfer the cherries to a jar.
Boil the syrup until very thick, adding more sugar if necessary.
Pour the thick syrup into the jar with an equal amount of brandy.
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
- Cherries
- Provide the fruit that softens in the syrup and absorbs its sweetness and flavour.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and, as the syrup thickens, helps keep the cherries preserved.
- Brandy
- Adds aroma and alcohol flavour, and its alcohol helps keep the finished cherries.
The step that matters
Boil the syrup until very thick. As water evaporates, sugar concentration rises and the syrup thickens. Boiling too little leaves it runny and weakly preserved, while boiling too long can make it stiff or crystallise as it cools.
“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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