Cherry
There has long been wanted a good classification of cherries. The least confusing is one lately made by Dr. Robert Hogg. He first of all divides them into Geans and Griottes. In the Geans, the fruit is heart-shaped, or nearly so, and the juice is sweet: in the Griottes, it is round or oblate, though sometimes, as in the Morella, inclining a little to the heart shape, and the juice is acid or sub-acid. There is a marked difference also in the form of the trees. The Geans again are divided into those which have the flesh tender and melting, and those Chestnuts which have the flesh only half tender, firm, and crackling. The first of these are called Geans proper, and are subdivided into Black Geans and Red Geans; the second are called Black Hearts and White Hearts. The Griottes are likewise divided into two kinds, according to the shapes of the trees; and these are again subdivided into Black Dukes and Red Dukes, according to the colour of the skin, Black Morellos and Red Morellos-the last being the Kentish cherry. Thus there are eight kinds: 1. Black Geans; 2. Red Geans; 3. Black Hearts; 4. White Hearts (where it is to be observed that the word heart refers to the shape); 5. Black Dukes; 6. Red Dukes; 7. Black Morellos; 8. Red Morellos.
Cherry Brandy.-Take Black Geans or Black Morellosbut remember that the former are sweet, the latter acid and bitter, and there will be a great difference in the results. They must not be over-ripe. Take off the stalks, and if you choose prick them with a pin. Fill a bottle with them three-quarters, pour in brandy to the neck, cork it up. It will be ready in a month.
Compõte of Cherries. - White Hearts boiled in syrup for three minutes. Sometimes a little noyau is put into the syrup when ready to serve.
The bulk of this entry is a pomologist's classification, but two workable recipes are buried in it: a bottled cherry brandy and a three-minute compote. Both depend entirely on picking the right cherry, which is the point of all the taxonomy above them.
- Translating the varietiesGeans are sweet cherries — Bing, Lapins, Stella, Rainier stand in for the Black and Red Geans and the Hearts. Griottes are sour cherries: Morello and Montmorency are the ones sold today, fresh only briefly in July or else frozen and jarred.
- Which cherry for the brandyDallas is right that the choice changes the drink completely. Sweet Geans give a soft, almost jammy liqueur; Morellos give something sharp, closer to a Danish-style cherry liqueur. Sour cherries are the better bet if you want the brandy to taste of cherry rather than of sugar.
- Bottle proportionsThree-quarters full of fruit with brandy poured to the neck comes out at somewhere around three-quarters of a pound of cherries and perhaps a cup and a half of spirit in a 750 ml bottle, depending on how tightly the fruit packs. Use a wide-necked jar rather than a bottle so you can get the fruit out again.
- No sugar is specifiedThe recipe as given is an unsweetened infusion, which with Morellos will be austere. Many later versions add sugar, on the order of 3 to 5 oz per pound of fruit, dissolved in the brandy before sealing. Add it at the start if you want it, since sugar also draws juice out of the fruit.
- A month is the minimumOne month gives colour and a thin cherry flavour. Three to six months in a dark cupboard is markedly better, and the pricked fruit will have given up most of its juice by then. Strain off the cherries once the brandy tastes right; left indefinitely they turn to mush.
- The stonesCherry stones contain amygdalin and, left whole, are said to contribute a faint almond note over long steeping; Dallas leaves them in and asks at most that the fruit be pricked. Do not crush or crack the stones to hurry that flavour along.
- The compote's three minutesThis is the hinge. White Hearts are firm-fleshed crackling cherries and three minutes in simmering syrup is enough to heat them through without collapse. Softer modern sweet cherries want no more than two, and sour cherries about the same. Dallas does not say what syrup; a medium one, roughly equal weights sugar and water boiled clear, suits.
- NoyauA almond-flavoured liqueur made from fruit kernels, still sold as crème de noyaux. Maraschino or kirsch is the usual substitute and stirs into the warm syrup off the heat, a teaspoon or two per serving, so the alcohol does not cook off.
- YieldNeither recipe states one. A pound of cherries in syrup serves four as a dessert; the brandy from one 750 ml bottle gives about ten to twelve small glasses plus the steeped fruit, which is good spooned over ice cream.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877) was written by the journalist E. S. Dallas around the reputation of Auguste Kettner's Soho restaurant, and this entry shows its habit of pausing mid-alphabet to sort out a subject before cooking anything. The classification credited to Dr Robert Hogg comes from his Fruit Manual, the standard British pomological reference of the period. The vocabulary is borrowed wholesale from French: guigne for the sweet heart-shaped cherry gives Dallas his "Gean", and griotte is still the French word for a sour cherry. The Kentish cherry he identifies with the Red Morello points to the orchards of north Kent, planted heavily from the sixteenth century onward and long the source of London's cherries.