Skip to main content
Drink

Belgian Method of Brandy Cherries

A preserved cherry liqueur made by boiling cherries with sugar, adding brandy and spices, then aging and filtering.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Belgian Method of Brandy Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Remove stems from cherries and pound them to break the stones.

  2. Combine cherries and sugar in a kettle and boil until half the syrup evaporates.

Steep

  1. Add boiling mixture to brandy with desired spices and let it sit in the sun.

  2. After a month, crush and press late cherries, then filter them.

Finish

  1. Mix filtered cherries with raspberries to create a ratafia, then combine with the first cherries.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Brandy + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Brandy + clovetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 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

Cherries
Provide the main fruit flavor and the juice that forms the body of the liqueur.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and draws water out of the fruit, helping the syrup keep well.
Brandy
Extracts flavor from the fruit and spices and its alcohol helps preserve the mixture.
Raspberries
Add tart fruit flavor and aroma to the ratafia.

The step that matters

Boiling the cherries and sugar until half the syrup evaporates. Reducing the syrup concentrates the sugar and flavor, so the mixture becomes thicker and more stable. Stopping too early leaves a watery syrup that dilutes the brandy and may spoil sooner.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, 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.

You might also like

Cinnamon TinctureCinnamon Tincture10 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes