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Dessert

Stewed Cherries on Fried Bread

A dessert of stewed cherries served over fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Cherries on Fried Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Remove the stalks from the cherries.

  2. In a pan, warm the cherries over moderate heat.

Stew the cherries

  1. Add the sugar and stir well.

  2. Gradually pour in the hot water and cook for 15 minutes until the cherries are tender.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the bread in butter until golden.

  2. Place the fried bread on a hot dish and pour the stewed cherries over it.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + breadtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cherries
Provide the fruit base, softening as they cook into a tender, juicy compote.
Sugar
Sweetens the cherries and helps draw out juice to form a syrup.
Bread
Forms the crisp-edged base that the warm cherries soak into.
Butter
Fat that fries the bread, promoting golden browning and rich flavour.

The step that matters

Cook the cherries until tender. Cherries must cook long enough to soften fully; the sugar and water then form a syrup. Undercooked fruit stays firm and tart, while overcooking can break it down into a thin, mushy sauce.

“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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