Sour Cherry Preserve with the Pits Left In

Three stages

1. Prep — prick each cherry once, do not stem-bruise

   Prick every cherry once with a needle at the side, away from the stem scar. The hole lets syrup in and lets the fruit shrink without splitting; a cherry that splits over the pit leaks juice and turns the batch foamy.

   Cover the fruit with the sugar and water and leave for 4 hours. Sour cherries are firm enough to macerate without collapsing, and the syrup that forms will be a clear, deep red that carries most of the fruit acid into the pan before any heat is applied.

2. Cook — three short boils with rests between

   Bring the pan to a boil, hold for 5 minutes and take it off the heat for 15 minutes. Repeat twice more. This is the same technique used for candied cherries and it exists for one reason: cherries are dense and a single long boil cooks the outside to jam while the inside of the fruit is still raw and pale.

   On the third pass, boil to 104 °C, add the lemon juice, and hold for 2 minutes. The pits have been releasing benzaldehyde throughout, so the jam should smell distinctly of almond by now. If it does not, the cherries were too ripe — the aroma comes from the pit wall and declines as the fruit matures.

3. Seal — fill around the pits, with a warning label

   Ladle fruit and syrup into warm 250 ml jars to a 6 mm headspace, making sure each jar gets a similar number of cherries, and process for 12 minutes in a boiling water bath. Twelve rather than ten because the pits hold heat unevenly and slow the centre of the jar down.

   Write pits left in on every lid in marker. This preserve is served with a spoon and a small bowl for the stones, and anyone who does not know that will find out the hard way at the table.

Failure diagnosis

Four things go wrong with this preserve more often than anything else. Open the one you are looking at.

• Will not set

  Sour cherry sets easily, so a runny batch usually means the fruit was diluted with too much water at maceration. Boil it down for 8 minutes and retest; the natural pectin will not fail you.

• Graining and crystals

  Low risk. The one thing to watch is the pit: a cherry that has cracked open against the stone leaks calcium-rich juice that can seed sugar crystals over a long storage. Prick carefully and discard any fruit that splits.

• Mould or spoilage

  Fruit packed shoulder-high in the jar and left above the syrup line will mould. Settle the jars on the counter for two minutes, then top up with hot syrup until the fruit is submerged by 6 mm.

• Colour loss

  Sour cherry is the most colour-stable fruit in the collection, holding a deep garnet for three years or more. It also stains everything it touches, so use a stainless pan and an apron you do not like.

On the same shelf

Other stone fruit recipes, all already published.