Why it works: Sugar and white currant work together. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 59 recipes. The science ↓
To Preserve Cherries in Syrup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Select clear, ripe cherries. Remove the stems and stones carefully to avoid damaging the fruit.
Make and cook
In a pot, combine the sugar and white currant juice to make a syrup.
Add the cherries to the syrup and bring to a boil.
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.
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Sugar + white curranttop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together59 recipes
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cherries
- Provide the fruit that is preserved, with their flesh holding shape in the syrup.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the dish and, dissolved into the juice, forms the syrup that preserves the fruit.
- White currant juice
- Adds acidity and liquid to the syrup, dissolving the sugar and flavoring the cherries.
The step that matters
Bringing the cherries to a boil in the syrup. Sugar must fully dissolve into the juice before the fruit goes in, and the boil should be controlled so the cherries stay whole rather than breaking down. Overboiling can make the fruit collapse and the syrup overly thick or caramelized.
“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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