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Dessert

Pickled Cherries

A preserved cherry dish made by boiling cherries in a sugar and vinegar syrup with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickled Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the vinegar, sugar, and spices together, skimming thoroughly.

Pack and seal

  1. Place the cherries in bottles.

  2. Strain the syrup over the cherries and seal the bottles.

Process and finish

  1. Submerge the bottles in boiling water for 10 minutes.

  2. Remove when they look like they are cracking.

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.

  1. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

White ox-heart cherries
Provide the fruit that softens and absorbs the spiced syrup while pickling.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acidifies the syrup, which preserves the fruit and gives it a tart flavor.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the syrup.
Mace
Adds a warm, nutmeg-like aroma to the syrup.
Ginger root
Adds a pungent, warm aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Removing the bottles from the boiling water. Cherries that are overprocessed turn mushy, while underprocessed jars may not seal or keep well. Watching for the cracking look signals the fruit is ready to come out, so timing matters.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, clove, cinnamon, ginger):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, clove, cinnamon, ginger. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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