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Dessert

Cherry Preserves

A sweet preserve made by cooking cherries with sugar and cherry juice until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,598 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cherry Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by combining sugar and cherry juice in a pot.

  2. Cool the syrup, then add the seeded cherries.

Cook and pack

  1. Cook rapidly until the fruit is clear and the syrup reaches the proper consistency.

  2. If using a thermometer, finish cooking at 223°F to 226°F (106°C to 108°C).

  3. Cool the preserves, pack into jars, and process as you would for other preserves.

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 + cherrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 becomes the body and flavor of the preserves.
Sugar
Sweetens and thickens the syrup and helps the preserves set as they cool.
Cherry juice
Forms the liquid base of the syrup that dissolves the sugar and cooks the fruit.

The step that matters

Cook rapidly until the syrup reaches the proper consistency. Sugar concentration determines whether the preserves set. Cooking too little leaves them runny, while cooking too long can make them stiff or cause the sugar to crystallize.

“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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