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Dessert

To Tickle Cherries

A pickled cherry preserve made with vinegar, spices, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,791 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

To Tickle Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Leave about an inch of stalks on the cherries and place them in a jar.

  2. Cover the cherries with cold vinegar and let them stand for three weeks.

  3. Pour off two-thirds of the vinegar and replace it with fresh vinegar.

Make the pickle

  1. Drain the cherries and boil the vinegar with coriander seed, mace, cayenne or peppercorns, and cochineals tied in muslin.

  2. Let the pickle cool before adding it to the cherries.

  3. After a month, the cherries will be ready to use.

Make the syrup

  1. To make syrup, boil the reserved vinegar with sugar, optionally infusing with fresh berries for 3-4 days.

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. Mace + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Vinegar + coriandertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Coriander + macetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together281 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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 is preserved and becomes the pickled product.
Cold vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid that softens and sharpens the fruit over time.
Sugar
Sweetens the reserved vinegar to make the syrup and balances its acidity.
Coriander seed
Adds warm, citrusy aroma to the pickle liquid.

The step that matters

Let the pickle cool before adding it to the cherries. Pouring hot liquid over fruit can soften it and cook the flesh, so cooling the pickle first helps the cherries keep their texture.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, coriander, mace, sugar):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, coriander, mace, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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