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.
Put them in a saucepan with the water and bring to a boil.
Add the sugar and cook until everything 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
- Cherries
- Provide the main fruit flavor, colour and body of the sauce.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the cherries' tartness.
- Sherry
- Adds a warm, aromatic note to the sauce.
- Ratafia essence
- Adds a concentrated almond-like aroma.
The step that matters
Cook until everything can be sieved. Cooking softens the cherries so their pulp and skins pass through a sieve smooth. Stopping too early leaves the sauce lumpy and fibrous, while cooking too long thickens and concentrates it too much.
“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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