To Dry Cherries with Sugar
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the cherries
Stone the cherries and place them in a preserving pan.
For stoning, press the fruit gently to remove the stones with the stalks, or use a pin if needed.
Sugar and dry
Add 6 ounces of powdered sugar for each pound of cherries.
Set over moderate heat and simmer gently for 20 minutes.
Let the cherries cool in the syrup, then drain them in a sieve.
Lay the cherries on dishes to dry gradually.
After stoning, add 8 ounces of sugar and boil the cherries softly for 10 minutes.
Pour them into a bowl and leave in the syrup for 2 days.
Simmer again for 10 minutes and let sit for 2-3 days.
Drain slightly and dry slowly as before.
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
What each ingredient does
- Cherries
- Provide the fruit that becomes the dried, chewy product.
- Powdered sugar
- Draws moisture out of the fruit and preserves it in syrup.
- Sugar
- Builds the concentrated syrup that sweetens and preserves the cherries during repeated soaking.
The step that matters
Simmer gently and keep the syrup from boiling hard. Hard boiling can break the fruit skins and toughen or collapse the cherries, while gentle simmering lets sugar slowly replace the water in the fruit.
“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.
You might also like
White Cake431 recipes
Pound Cake373 recipes
Orange Bundt Cake349 recipes
Spice Cake344 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.