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Preserved Cherries
The large red variety of cherries, usually used for pies, and the Morello cherry are the best for preserves. They should be fresh and sound, and the larger the better. Remove the stems and stones from the cherries, being careful not to bruise them. Then weigh the cherries, and allow their own weight in sugar; shake the sugar over the cherries, and stir in with them and allow them to stand all night in order that the sugar may harden the cherries slightly. In the morning put all into the preserving-pan, place on the stove, allow it to get hot gradually, and boil gently until the cherries look clear, skimming off the scum as it rises. When the cherries have become quite clear, remove the pan from the stove, cover it over and let the preserve cool. When cold, put it into glass jars, dip pieces of white paper in brandy and place on the tops of the jars, and cover them tightly so as to keep out the air. Keep in a cool, dark place.
A straightforward equal-weight preserve of the kind every well-run kitchen made in July. Two details carry it: the overnight sugaring, and the slow, gentle boil.
- The hinge: sugar overnightDo not skip the standing time. Osmosis draws juice out of the fruit and firms the flesh, so the cherries hold their shape instead of collapsing into jam during cooking. Twelve hours is right; the pan will be swimming in syrup by morning.
- The right cherries"The large red variety of cherries, usually used for pies" and the Morello both point to sour cherries — Montmorency, Morello, English Morello. Sweet Bing or Rainier cherries have too little acid and will give a flabby, cloying preserve.
- Preserving-panA wide, shallow, heavy pan — the width matters more than the depth, because evaporation is what thickens the syrup. The recipe does not specify a material; stainless steel or lined copper are the safe modern choices, and aluminium reacts with fruit acid.
- Judging "quite clear"The visual cue is the fruit turning translucent, which is the only test the recipe gives; the syrup thickens as it reduces. About 220F at sea level is the usual setting point for jams, but clarity rather than a set is what is being watched for here. Keep it at a gentle boil, not a hard rolling one.
- Cooling in the panLetting the preserve go cold before jarring lets the fruit absorb syrup and stops the cherries floating in a raft at the top of the jar. It is a deliberate step, not idleness.
- The brandy paperA round of paper soaked in spirit laid directly on the surface was the standard pre-canning defence against surface mould. It works after a fashion, but it is not a seal.
- Sealing, brought up to dateCold-packing into jars and covering tightly is the one part of this that modern practice has overturned. Either ladle the preserve hot into sterilised jars and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes, or treat it as a refrigerator preserve and use it within a month. A cool dark cupboard is no longer the standard of safety it was in 1896.
Oscar Tschirky was never technically the chef of the Waldorf — he was its maître d'hôtel — but his 1896 Cook Book gathered the working repertoire of a great hotel kitchen, and that repertoire still included the seasonal preserving that any large household did for itself. Sour cherries have a short, violent season, and equal weights of fruit and sugar was a common European ratio for holding them: enough sugar to bind the water and make the fruit inhospitable to spoilage organisms, which may be why recipes of this kind do not mention sterilising or processing times. The brandy-soaked paper laid on top is an older French habit still, generally traced to the practice of sealing confitures with spirit-dampened rounds beneath a tied bladder or parchment cover; the alcohol discouraged the surface moulds that were the real enemy of a preserve cupboard. That Oscar prints it at all, in a book otherwise full of terrapin and canvasback duck, is a reminder that a hotel kitchen of the 1890s still worked with the seasons.