Cherry Brandy
INGREDIENTS.- 4 lbs. of Morello cherries picked just ripe, 3 bottles of good French brandy, 3¼ lbs. of white sugar. AVERAGE COST, 18s.
Have the cherries perfectly dry, and, after pricking them with a needle, drop them in a large stone wine-jar. Pour over them the sugar, pounded, and the brandy, give them an occasional shake, and the liqueur should be fit to drink in 3 months.
TIME.-3 months.
SEASONABLE.-Make this in August.
To
A steeping liqueur rather than a cooked one, so the only real variables are fruit quality, jar hygiene and patience. A few of the original's terms need translating.
- What the quantities come toThree bottles of brandy in Beeton's day is roughly 2 to 2.25 litres (about 2.5 to 3 modern 750 ml bottles). With 4 lb of cherries and 3 lb of sugar you need a vessel of at least 5 litres capacity to allow headroom for shaking.
- Morello means sourMorellos are sour cherries -- Morellos are dark, acidic cooking cherries, not sweet dessert varieties. Sweet cherries make a flat, cloying liqueur; if you cannot find Morellos, look for Montmorency or any sour cherry, and reduce the sugar slightly if using a sweeter fruit.
- "Picked just ripe" and "perfectly dry"This is the hinge. Any surface water dilutes the spirit at the fruit's skin, and wet or split cherries will cloud the whole batch. Wipe each one, and discard anything bruised or weeping.
- Pricking the cherriesPricking lets the brandy in and the juice out without crushing the stones. Leave the stones whole and intact; cracked kernels release benzaldehyde and trace amygdalin, which is what gives some cherry brandies their almond note but is not something to encourage deliberately.
- The stone wine-jarAny wide-mouthed glass jar or demijohn with a tight closure works. Avoid decorative glazed earthenware of unknown origin, and avoid metal lids in direct contact with the liquid — the acid and alcohol will corrode them.
- Pounded sugarBeeton's white sugar came as a hard loaf that had to be broken up. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct substitute; caster dissolves faster still. Shake every few days for the first fortnight until no crystals remain at the bottom.
- After the three monthsThe recipe stops at "fit to drink" and says nothing about straining. Decant through muslin into clean bottles; the liqueur keeps for years and improves for the first one or two. The drained cherries are excellent over ice cream, and potent.
- YieldRoughly 2.5 to 3 litres of finished liqueur, once the sugar has dissolved and allowing for what the fruit absorbs.
Fruit steeped in spirit and sugar — the family of drinks the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries called ratafias, cordials or brandies — was standard domestic work in an English house with a garden, and cherry brandy was among the most common. The Morello was the cherry for it: too sharp to eat out of hand, widely grown against walls in Kent and elsewhere, and ripening in high summer, which is why Beeton files the recipe as seasonable in August. The method is preserving of the simplest kind, alcohol and sugar doing together what neither could do alone, and it required no equipment beyond a jar and three months of not touching it. The costing of 18s. is a reminder of who this was for: good French brandy was the expensive part by a wide margin, and a household making three bottles' worth at once was a comfortable one.