To Dry Cherries
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash cherries and remove stems.
Combine cherries and an equal weight of sugar in a pot.
Make the syrup
Bring the mixture to a boil.
Let it boil for one minute.
Remove from heat and let sit overnight.
The next day, strain the syrup.
If needed, add more sugar and boil down the syrup.
Boil the cherries for five minutes on three separate days.
Dry and store
After the final boil, drain the cherries.
Place the cherries on wire racks to dry in a stove or a nearly cold oven.
Store the dried cherries in jars or bottles, each containing a single-use quantity.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Cherries
- Provide the fruit that becomes the dried product, with their moisture drawn out by the sugar syrup.
- Sugar
- Draws water out of the fruit through osmosis and gives the dried cherries their sweetness and preserving effect.
The step that matters
Repeated boiling over three days. Each boil and overnight rest pulls water out of the cherries while sugar slowly replaces it. Boiling too hard or too long at once can shrivel the skins and leave a tough texture, so the gradual repeated approach keeps the fruit intact while it dries.
“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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