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To Pickle Cherries

A method of preserving cherries in vinegar, spices, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Pickle Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and steep

  1. Leave about an inch of stalks on the cherries and place them in a jar.

  2. Cover the cherries with cold vinegar and let them stand for three weeks.

  3. Pour off two-thirds of the vinegar and replace it with fresh vinegar.

Make the pickle

  1. Drain the cherries and boil the vinegar with coriander seed, mace, cayenne or white peppercorns, and bruised cochineals tied in muslin.

  2. Let the pickle cool completely before adding it to the cherries.

Rest and serve

  1. After a month, the cherries will be ready to use.

  2. To make syrup, boil the poured-off vinegar with sugar, optionally infusing with fresh raspberries, cherries, or currants for three to four days.

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. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Vinegar + coriandertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Coriander + macetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together281 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Vinegar + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,415 recipes
  5. Coriander + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,749 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Cherries
Provide the fruit itself, which firms and flavours as it sits in the pickle.
Cold vinegar
Acidity that preserves the fruit and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy flavour.
Sugar
Sweetness that balances the sourness of the vinegar in the syrup.
Cochineal
Natural red dye that colours the pickling liquid and the cherries.

The step that matters

Cool the pickle completely before adding it to the cherries. Hot pickle keeps cooking the fruit, which softens the flesh and can make the cherries mushy instead of firm.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, coriander, sugar. 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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