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Dessert

Preserved Cherries

A sweet preserve made by boiling pitted cherries in a sugar syrup until thickened and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Preserved Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stone the cherries and weigh them.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in water using 1 pint of water for every 1.5 pounds of sugar.

Cook and preserve

  1. Add the cherries to the sugar solution and bring to a boil.

  2. Boil rapidly for 30 minutes until the mixture begins to thicken.

  3. Once thickened, transfer to jars and cover with brandied paper, sealing tightly.

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

Cherries
Provide the fruit, which softens and releases juice into the syrup as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and thickens the syrup as it reduces, helping preserve the cherries.
Water
Dissolves the sugar to form the syrup that the cherries cook in.

The step that matters

Boil rapidly until the mixture begins to thicken. Sugar concentration rises as water evaporates during boiling. Enough reduction is needed for the syrup to thicken and help preserve the fruit, so stopping too early can leave it runny and less stable.

“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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