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Dessert

Maraschino Cherries

A sweet preserve of cherries flavored with almond and colored red.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Maraschino Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pit the cherries and weigh them.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine cherries and sugar; boil for 1 minute.

  2. Add almond flavor and boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and add red coloring.

Jar

  1. Fill small jars with the mixture and seal.

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. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Royal anne cherries
Provides the fruit that the sugar syrup is cooked around, giving the body and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, at this concentration, helps preserve the fruit.
Almond flavor
Adds the characteristic almond aroma.
Red coloring
Gives the cherries their bright red color.

The step that matters

Add the red coloring after removing from heat. Many food dyes fade or break down with prolonged heat, so adding the coloring off the heat helps keep the red bright.

“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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