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Dessert

Brandied Cherries

Sweet cherries preserved in a syrup of water, sugar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Brandied Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine water and sugar in a pot.

  2. Boil and skim until clear.

  3. Let syrup boil for 12 minutes.

  4. Add cooking brandy to the syrup.

Prepare and pack the cherries

  1. Remove stems from cherries.

  2. Scald cherries in syrup for 3 minutes without breaking skins.

  3. Remove cherries from the pot.

  4. Place cherries in cans.

  5. Pour syrup over to overflow.

  6. Seal the cans.

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

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Sweet cherries
Provide the fruit, which softens slightly when scalded and keeps its shape in the syrup.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the cherries in it.
Cooking brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Scald cherries in syrup for 3 minutes without breaking skins. Heating fruit too long or too hard softens the skins and flesh until they split, so the cherries lose their shape and look. A gentle simmer keeps them whole while the syrup slowly penetrates.

“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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