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Dessert

Morello Cherries

A preserve made by steeping Morello cherries in sugar and currant juice syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

Morello Cherries

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Gather ripe cherries.

  2. Remove the stalks.

  3. Prick each cherry with a pin.

  4. Sprinkle part of the sugar over the cherries.

  5. Let sit overnight.

Make the syrup and preserve

  1. Dissolve the remaining sugar in currant juice over low heat.

  2. Add the cherries to the syrup.

  3. Gently scald them.

  4. Carefully remove the cherries.

  5. Boil the syrup until thick.

  6. Pour the thick syrup over the cherries.

  7. Seal them.

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. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Morello cherries
Provide the main fruit, with their tartness and flavor carrying through the preserve.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, thickens the syrup and helps preserve the cherries.
Currant juice
Supplies the liquid for the syrup and adds acidity and fruity flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thick. Sugar concentration is what preserves the fruit and sets the syrup. Syrup that is not boiled down far enough stays thin, so it can spoil and will not hold the cherries well.

“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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