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Dessert

Brandied Cherries

Cherries cooked in a sugar syrup, then preserved in jars with brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and a little water in a pot to make a syrup.

  2. Cook the cherries in the syrup until tender.

  3. Remove the cherries and boil the syrup until thick.

Jar the cherries

  1. Fill jars three-quarters full with cherries and syrup.

  2. Top off each jar with raw brandy.

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

Cherries
Provide the fruit, which softens and absorbs the syrup as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, dissolved and boiled, thickens into a syrup that preserves.
Raw brandy
Adds alcohol that helps preserve the cherries and contributes flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thick. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates the sugar, so the syrup becomes thick enough to coat the cherries and help preserve them in the jars.

“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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