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Cherries in Spiced Vinegar

Cherries are simmered in a spiced vinegar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Cherries in Spiced Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spiced vinegar

  1. Boil the sugar and vinegar together.

  2. Add the ground spices to a muslin bag and tie it closed.

  3. Add the spice bag to the boiling mixture and simmer for a few minutes.

Finish

  1. Pour the hot spiced vinegar over the 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 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

Sugar
Sweetens the liquid and helps preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the cherries.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma to the spiced vinegar.
Cloves
Adds strong, warm aroma to the spiced vinegar.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma to the spiced vinegar.
Cherries
Form the fruit that soaks up the sweet, spiced vinegar.

The step that matters

Simmer the spice bag. Heat is needed to draw flavor out of whole or ground spices into the liquid. Simmering for only a brief time may leave the vinegar weakly spiced, so the spice bag should stay in the boiling mixture for the full simmer.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, clove. 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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