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Dessert

Spiced Cherries

A preserve of cherries simmered in cider vinegar, cinnamon, cloves, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Spiced Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the cider vinegar with the cinnamon and cloves tied in a bag.

  2. Add the sugar and boil for 10 minutes, skimming well.

  3. Add the stoned cherries and cook gently for 30 minutes.

Pack and seal

  1. Lift out the cherries with a skimmer and boil the syrup down until thick.

  2. Put the cherries into jars, keeping them hot until you add the syrup.

  3. Close and seal the jars.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 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. Cinnamon + sugartop 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. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Stoned cherries
Form the bulk of the preserve, providing fruit flesh and most of the texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, once boiled down, thickens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and gives the syrup its tang.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm aroma and spice flavour to the syrup.
Cloves
Contributes strong aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup down until thick. Once the cherries are lifted out, the syrup must reduce enough to thicken. Too little boiling leaves a runny syrup that may not keep well in sealed jars.

Swap the clove

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

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

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