Why it works: Sugar and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,141 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Cherry Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare and cook
Wash and pick the cherries.
Place the cherries in a saucepan with the water and bring to a boil.
Add the sugar and cook until the mixture can be sieved.
Finish and serve
Return the sauce to the pan, add the sherry, and the blanched and shredded kernels.
Serve hot or cold.
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 + sherrytop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,141 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Ripe red or black cherries
- Provide the main fruit flavour and the colour of the sauce.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens the sauce and, as it cooks down, gives it body.
- Sherry
- Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the finished sauce.
The step that matters
Cooking the sugar until the sauce can be sieved. Cook long enough that the water evaporates and the syrup thickens, so the sauce is body enough to pass through a sieve. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while cooking too long makes it stiff and sticky.
“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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