Name: Cherry Honey
Ingredients: 1 pint sour cherries; 2 pints sugar; a pinch of alum

Cherry Honey

Ingredients

1 pint sour cherries
2 pints sugar
a pinch of alum

Directions

Grind the sour cherries.
Add the sugar and a pinch of alum.
Boil for 15 minutes.

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

What each ingredient does

Sour cherries: Provide the fruit base, flavour and most of the liquid for the honey.
Sugar: Sweetens and thickens the cherry mixture as it boils down into a syrup.
Alum: Helps the cherry mixture set and keeps the fruit firm.

“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.