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Dessert

Compote of Moeello Cherries

A compote made from Morello cherries simmered with water, sugar, and 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 ↓

Compote of Moeello Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stalks from the cherries, leaving half an inch attached to the fruit.

  2. In a pot, combine the cherries and enough water to cover them.

Make the syrup

  1. Add the sugar and simmer for no more than five minutes.

  2. Use a strainer to lift the cherries into a dessert dish.

  3. Reduce the syrup and pour it over the cherries.

Finish and cool

  1. Add the French brandy and set the dish in a cold cellar to cool quickly.

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

Morello cherries
Provide the main fruit flavour and a tart acidity that the sweet syrup balances.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the dish and dissolves into the liquid to form the syrup.
French brandy
Adds aroma; it is added at the end so its volatile flavour is not cooked off.

The step that matters

Simmer the cherries only briefly. Prolonged heat softens the cherries, breaks down their skins and pectin, and leaves them mushy with dull colour and flavour. Keeping the simmer to no more than five minutes preserves their shape and fresh taste.

“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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