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Pickled Cherries

A pickled cherry preserve made with sugar, cider vinegar, cloves, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickled Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spiced syrup

  1. Place cloves and cinnamon in a muslin bag.

  2. Boil the bag with sugar and cider vinegar.

Pickle the cherries

  1. After boiling, add the pitted cherries.

  2. Boil until the cherries are tender.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cider + clovetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,683 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Pitted cherries
Form the main body of the pickle and soften as they simmer in the syrup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the pickle its tart flavor.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Cinnamon
Contributes sweet, woody aroma and warmth to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil until the cherries are tender. Cherries soften as they cook in the hot sugar and vinegar syrup. Overcooking makes the fruit split and turn mushy, so check texture by feel rather than relying only on the clock.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cider, vinegar, cinnamon):

  1. Allspicefits about as well
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Cardamomfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cider, vinegar, cinnamon. 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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