Skip to main content
Dessert

Dried Cherries

A method for preserving cherries in clarified syrup and drying them.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Dried Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Remove stems and stones from the cherries using a quill.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the clarified syrup until it reaches the degree of a light syrup.

  2. Add the cherries to the syrup and bring to a boil.

  3. Let the mixture sit overnight.

  4. Strain the syrup.

  5. Add more sugar if needed.

  6. Boil until thickened.

Boil and dry

  1. Return the cherries to the syrup and boil for five minutes.

  2. Repeat the boiling process for two more days.

  3. Drain the cherries.

  4. Lay them on wire sieves to dry in a stove or a nearly cool oven.

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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cherries
Provide the fruit, which becomes chewy and concentrated as it dries.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, in the syrup, draws out moisture to preserve it.

The step that matters

Repeated boiling in syrup. Sugar must gradually replace the water in the fruit. Boiling too hard or too briefly can cause the cherries to shrivel, toughen, or stay wet inside, so the syrup should be boiled at the stated intervals rather than rushed.

“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.

More dried cherries recipes

with Sugar 8 See all 55 →

You might also like

Oranges in SyrupOranges in Syrup9 recipesSyrup SauceSyrup Sauce6 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes