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Brandied Morella Cherries

Brandied Morella cherries are ripe cherries preserved in brandy with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and cherry work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 300 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Brandied Morella Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Cut off half the length of the stalks from the cherries.

  2. Gently drop the cherries into clean, dry quart bottles with wide necks.

Fill and seal the bottles

  1. Leave enough space in each bottle for 8 ounces of sugar.

  2. Fill the bottles entirely with brandy.

  3. Cork them tightly.

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. Brandy + cherrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together300 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Sugar + cherrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 recipes

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

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

Morella cherries
Supply the main fruit flavor and juicy texture that the brandy slowly takes on.
Pounded white sugar candy
Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the fruit and the spirit.
French brandy
Acts as the preserving liquid, extracting fruit flavor and keeping the cherries from spoiling.

The step that matters

Fill the bottles entirely with brandy. Alcohol that fully covers the fruit keeps air and microbes away from the cherries, which helps them keep. Any cherries left exposed above the liquid can spoil, so the bottles should be filled right to the top before corking.

Swap the cherry

The recipe marks cherry as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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