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Dessert

To Pickle Cherries

A method for pickling cherries in vinegar with 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 Pickle 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.

  4. Drain the cherries.

Make the pickle

  1. Boil the vinegar with coriander seed, mace, cayenne or white peppercorns, and bruised cochineals tied in muslin.

  2. Let the pickle cool completely.

  3. Add the cooled pickle to the cherries.

  4. Wait a month.

Finish the syrup

  1. Boil the reserved vinegar with 1 pound of sugar per pint.

  2. Optionally infuse with fresh raspberries, cherries, or currants 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, keeping its texture and flavour in the pickle.
Cold vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid, its acidity keeping the fruit stable and sharp-tasting.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar.
Coriander seed
Contributes warm, citrusy aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Boil the vinegar with spices and let the pickle cool completely before adding it to the cherries. Adding hot pickle would soften the cherries and cook them, while cooling lets the spice flavours steep without damaging the fruit's 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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