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Cherry Bounce
4½ QUARTS SOUR, RED CHERRIES 1/2 POUNDS SUGAR 2 QUARTS WHISKEY Wash and stem cherries; put in a jug, including pits. Add sugar, then whiskey. Let stand a few weeks, and it will be ready for use. As you use it, leave the cherries in the jug, until the whiskey is all drained off, keeping company with choruses of "Little Brown Jug, don't I love thee."
A steeping liqueur rather than a cooked recipe: the only real work is sourcing sour cherries and finding a vessel big enough. Everything after that is patience.
- Sugar quantityThe sugar figure as printed reads "1/2 pounds," which is oddly phrased and may garble 1½ pounds; ½ pound is very little sugar for 4½ quarts of fruit and 2 quarts of spirit. Sweetness in bounce recipes varies a great deal, so treat the amount as a matter of taste and start at the low end, since you can stir more in later.
- Sour cherriesMontmorency or Morello, not Bing or Rainier. Sweet cherries make a flat, syrupy bounce; the acidity of a pie cherry is what gives the drink its edge. Frozen sour cherries work and can be used straight from the bag.
- Volume of fruit4½ quarts of whole cherries is about 6 to 7 pounds. With 2 quarts of whiskey on top you need a vessel of at least two gallons; a wide-mouth glass jar is easier to fill and empty than a stoneware jug.
- The pitsCherry stones contain amygdalin, which releases small amounts of cyanide when the kernel is crushed or ground. Whole intact pits steeping in spirit are the traditional method and are not a concern, but do not crack, crush or blend them, and strain the cherries out rather than eating them by the handful.
- WhiskeyStandard 80-proof bourbon or rye. Higher proof extracts faster and holds better against the water the fruit gives up; anything below 80 proof risks a weak, unstable result over a long steep.
- "A few weeks"Three weeks gives a drinkable but thin infusion. Two to three months is where colour and flavour settle, and bounce is often said to have been put up in summer and opened at Christmas. Keep the jar in a cool dark place and turn or swirl it every few days until the sugar has dissolved.
- Topping upThe instruction to leave the cherries in the jar as you draw off the liquid works, but once the fruit is no longer submerged it will oxidise and go brown. If the level drops, either strain the whole batch into bottles or add enough whiskey to keep the cherries covered.
- YieldRoughly 2½ to 3 quarts of finished liqueur, since the cherries give up juice as they steep and the dissolved sugar adds volume, plus several pounds of boozy cherries good over ice cream or in a manhattan.
Cherry bounce is one of the oldest American home liqueurs, appearing in colonial household books along with its cousins the cordials and shrubs, all of them ways of keeping a fruit crop past its two-week season. The name is generally traced to the British slang sense of "bounce" for something with a sudden kick. Martha Washington's household is often credited with a cherry bounce recipe, and George Washington is said to have carried a canteen of it on a trip west in 1784, though such attributions travel more easily than they document. The method survived into the twentieth century largely because it needs no equipment and no heat, which is exactly why it turns up in an outdoor cookery book: fruit, sugar, a jug and a corner of the cellar. The chorus of "Little Brown Jug" quoted at the end dates from an 1869 song that had a second life as a Glenn Miller swing hit in 1939.