Skip to main content
Dessert

Brandied Cherries

Preserved cherries soaked in brandy after cooking with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Brandied Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine equal weights of sugar and cherries in a pot.

  2. Cook the mixture slowly for five hours.

  3. When transferring to jars, add ½ cup of brandy to each pint jar.

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 + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Sugar
Draws juice out of the cherries and dissolves into a syrup that helps preserve the fruit.
Cherries
Provide the main fruit, releasing juice that combines with the sugar into a syrup.
Brandy
Adds alcohol that helps preserve the cherries and contributes aroma.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture slowly for five hours. Gentle, prolonged heat lets the sugar draw out juice and dissolve evenly without scorching or caramelizing the sugar at the bottom of the pot.

“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.

You might also like

Brandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesBrandy CreamBrandy Cream21 recipesBrandy PuddingBrandy Pudding13 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes