Name: Maraschino Cherries
Ingredients: 1 cup cherries; 1 cup brandy; 1 cup sugar; equal parts boiling brandy syrup and maraschino for filling

Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Maraschino Cherries

Ingredients

1 cup cherries
1 cup brandy
1 cup sugar
equal parts boiling brandy syrup and maraschino for filling

Directions

Prepare the syrup

Wipe the cherries and place them in a bowl.
Cook the brandy and sugar in a saucepan for 3 minutes to make a syrup.

Pack and store

Pour the hot syrup over the cherries and cover until cool.
Pack the cherries into a small jar and fill it with equal parts of boiling brandy syrup and maraschino.
Seal the jar and store it in a cool, dark place until needed.

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.

Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,939 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Brandy + syruptop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together561 recipes

Brandy and sugar 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 and absorbs the syrup as the preserves develop.
Brandy: Forms the syrup base and acts as a preservative that keeps the fruit stable in the jar.
Sugar: Dissolves into the brandy to make a syrup that sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it.

“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.