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Dessert

Cherry Sauce

A sweet sauce made from cherries, sugar, water, and flavored with sherry and ratafia.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,237 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Cherry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and pick the cherries.

  2. Put the cherries in a saucepan with the water and bring to a boil.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the sugar and cook until the mixture can be sieved.

  2. Return the sauce to the pan, add the sherry, and the blanched, shredded kernels.

Serve

  1. Serve hot or cold.

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. Sherry + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,237 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

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

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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 body of the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, as it cooks down, gives it a thicker body.
Sherry
Adds a warm, winey aroma and depth to the sauce.
Cherry kernels (in the method)
Add a subtle, almond-like aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the sugar until the mixture can be sieved. Sugar dissolves into the cherry juice and the liquid reduces and thickens as it cooks. Stopping too early leaves the sauce thin, while cooking too long makes it stiff and sticky once cooled.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, sherry):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry. 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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