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Brandied Cherries
Use, preferably, white cherries. Leave a bit of stem on each one. Place in layers in jars and fill up with brandy, letting stand two days. Have ready a thick syrup, drain the liquor from the cherries and add equal quantity of boiling syrup to the brandy. Strain and pour over the fruit, letting stand this time twelve hours-the fruit bottled and corked. Next day fill up any space with syrup till just below corks, then seal.
PICKLED CHERRIES (Uncooked) Clip, leaving an inch of the stems. Place in jars in layers, alternating with thick layers of powdered sugar. Fill threefourths full. Fill up with cold, spiced vinegar and seal; or thin bags of spices may be placed among the cherries and plain vinegar poured over fruit and sugar.
PICKLED CHERRIES (Cooked) To two pounds of cherries allow one pound of sugar and one-half pint vinegar. Pour this boiling hot over the cherries. If the yellow cherries are used place them in the kettle and boil a few minutes with the syrup. Add spice or not and omit part of the sugar if desired more tart.
Three separate preserves run together in one entry: cherries in brandy syrup, and two vinegar pickles. The measurements are casual even by the standards of the period, and a few of the words do not mean what they now mean.
- "White" cherriesThese are the pale yellow-blushed sweet cherries — Royal Ann, Napoleon, or the modern Rainier. They hold their shape and stay translucent in syrup, where dark Bings turn the liquid muddy. The "yellow cherries" of the cooked pickle are probably the same sort of fruit, though the recipe singles them out for a few minutes' boiling.
- Powdered sugarIn a book of this age, powdered sugar means finely granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold under that name today. Use plain granulated.
- Thick syrupNo ratio is given. A heavy preserving syrup of the period is roughly two parts sugar to one part water by volume, boiled until clear. Because this syrup is added in equal quantity to the drained brandy, a 40% ABV spirit ends up near 20% — enough to preserve, but the jars belong in a cool dark cupboard, not a warm one.
- Half a pint of vinegarOne cup, against two pounds of cherries and a pound of sugar in the cooked pickle. Use cider or white wine vinegar at 5% acidity; a low-acid "drinking" vinegar will not do the work here.
- Bottled and corkedCorks and sealing wax are the closing method this recipe assumes. Use two-piece canning lids or clamp jars with fresh gaskets. The brandied cherries and the uncooked pickle get no heat at all, and the cooked pickle is only doused with boiling syrup rather than processed, so treat all three as refrigerator preserves and keep them cold once made rather than storing them on a shelf for months.
- The uncooked pickleThis one relies entirely on the sugar drawing juice out of the fruit and the vinegar acidifying it, with no quantities specified at all. Pack the jars three-quarters full as directed, keep the fruit fully submerged in vinegar, and refrigerate; discard anything that ferments, gasses or grows a skin.
- Spiced vinegarThe book names no spices at all. A usual period spiced vinegar is whole cloves, a stick of cinnamon, a blade of mace and a few allspice berries simmered in the vinegar, then cooled and strained. The alternative it offers — spices tied in thin bags and laid among the fruit — gives a cleaner-looking jar.
- StemsLeaving a stub of stem on is not decoration. It gives you something to lift the fruit by and keeps the skin unbroken, which is what stops the cherries collapsing into the syrup.
- YieldTwo pounds of cherries fills roughly two to three pint jars, depending how tightly they pack. Brandied cherries improve after a month and are served as a dessert garnish or with the syrup as a cordial; the pickles are meant for cold meat and game.
Fruit put down in spirit is one of the oldest forms of preserving that requires no fire, and cherries were its favourite subject across Europe — the French cerises à l'eau-de-vie, the American cherry bounce that turns the same materials into a drink rather than a sweetmeat. The two-stage method here, brandy first and syrup second, keeps the fruit firm: neat spirit draws water out of the cherries before any sugar goes in, so they do not go flabby the way fruit cooked straight into heavy syrup often does. That the same page also offers sweet-sour pickled cherries says something about how a turn-of-the-century table worked. Vinegar-and-sugar fruit was standard alongside roast and cold meats, and it is easy to imagine a cook with a glut of a short-season fruit dividing it between the sweet cupboard and the pickle shelf on the same afternoon, though how common that was is not something the recipes themselves record.