Cherry
The cherry is the small, fleshy stone fruit of several trees in the genus Prunus. It comes in two main beverage types: sweet cherries, eaten fresh and pressed for juice, and tart or sour cherries, whose sharper acidity suits fermentation, infusion, syrups and distillation. Cherries flavor a wide range of drinks, including juices, sherbets, sodas, fruit wines, sour beers, liqueurs and clear fruit spirits.
How cherry is prepared
Tart cherries are pressed into juice and concentrate, cooked into syrups for sherbets, sodas and cordials, and macerated in spirits or wine for homemade cordials and liqueurs. They are also refermented with lambic to make kriek, fermented into cherry wine, and distilled into kirsch and maraschino. Sweet cherry juice is blended into fruit drinks and carbonated beverages. Cherry syrup flavors cola and other sodas, and the fruit or its liqueur appears as a cocktail ingredient and garnish.
Cooking ingredients in liquid over time.
The product page describes two hours of oven stewing for the cherry and spice mixture.[7]
Service signal Works as a other component.
In depth
Ancient roots and early juices
Wild cherries grew across Europe, western Asia and parts of North Africa, and people ate them long before anyone planted orchards. Greek and Roman writers connected cultivated cherries with the Black Sea coast of Anatolia. Roman tradition credits the general Lucullus with bringing a cultivated tree to Rome in the first century BCE. Pressed cherry juice is one of the oldest documented cherry drinks. Herodotus describes a steppe people, the Argippaeans, who drank the juice of a cherry-like fruit either straight or mixed with milk, and Romans also drank cherry juice. From the Mediterranean, cherry growing spread with Roman and later monastic horticulture into northern Europe. Much later it reached England's orchards and, in the early 1600s, the French colonies of North America.[1]
Sour cherry sherbets of Turkey, Iran and the Middle East
Turkey and Iran are among the world's leading growers of sour cherries. Both countries have long traditions of turning the fruit into nonalcoholic drinks. Sour cherries are simmered with sugar into a thick syrup, which is diluted with cold water to make a refreshing sherbet. In Turkey this drink is called vişne şerbeti, and in Iran it is sharbat-e albaloo. These sherbets belong to a wider Persian and Ottoman culture of fruit and flower syrups. They are served chilled in summer, offered to guests, and enjoyed during festive meals such as the breaking of the fast in Ramadan. Commercial orchards across the region, including those in Syria, Lebanon and Azerbaijan, still supply fruit for juices, syrups and preserves.[2]
Kriek: cherries in Belgian lambic
In and around Brussels, brewers have long added sour cherries to lambic, a dry, tart beer fermented spontaneously by wild yeasts. The resulting style, kriek, takes its name from the Dutch word for this kind of cherry. Using fruit to flavor lambic is thought to predate the near-universal adoption of hops. The traditional fruit is a local Morello type associated with the Schaarbeek district. Whole cherries, pits included, rest in the beer for months, and their sugars referment completely, leaving a fruity but dry and sour beer. As Schaarbeek cherries grew scarce, many brewers turned to other sour varieties, sometimes imported. Some modern versions use juice, shorter maturation and added sugar to produce a sweeter, more approachable drink. Related cherry beers are also brewed from Flemish oud bruin.[3]
Kirsch, maraschino and Adriatic cherry spirits
Cherries rank alongside apples, pears, plums and apricots as a classic base for European fruit spirits. Kirschwasser is a clear spirit distilled from fermented cherry mash, and the Black Forest version holds protected regional status in the European Union. Hungarian pálinka and Balkan rakia are also made from cherries, among other fruits. On the Dalmatian coast of Croatia, the small, sour Marasca cherry gave rise to maraschino. This clear liqueur is distilled from the fruit and its crushed stones, which give it a nutty, floral, faintly bitter character rather than an obvious cherry taste. Maraschino became an industry in Zadar under Venetian rule in the eighteenth century and was soon exported widely, especially to Britain. It later became a staple of nineteenth-century and classic cocktails such as the Martinez, the Aviation and the Last Word.[4]
Cordials, ratafias and household infusions
Steeping cherries in spirit or wine with sugar was one of the most common household drink preparations in early modern Europe and colonial America. Ratafia, a broad family of sweetened Mediterranean infusions, may be flavored with cherry kernels for their almond-like bitterness. In Abruzzo in central Italy, a traditional ratafia is made from sour amarena cherries steeped in local red wine. Further north and east, Polish wiśniówka and similar sour cherry cordials from Central and Eastern Europe follow the same principle. In Britain, sweetened cherry infusions are known as cherry brandy, and in early America as cherry bounce. These homemade cordials were often served as digestifs or holiday treats.[5]
Cherry wine in cool-climate regions
Where grapes ripen poorly, cherries have long served as a winemaking fruit. Cherry wine appears in colonial American accounts and remains a favorite of home winemakers who make country wines. Tart cherries are preferred because they supply enough acidity, though the mash is usually diluted with water and adjusted with sugar to tame their sharpness. Sour cherry wines may be fortified or spiced, or blended with grape wine. Michigan, the leading tart cherry region of the United States, makes several such styles. Fortified cherry wines are traditional in Denmark and Croatia, and production has been growing in China as cherry orchards there expand.[6]
Soda fountains, cherry cola and modern juices
In the late nineteenth century, the United States imported cherry juice from Germany, mostly from black cherries grown near Magdeburg. Druggists and soda makers used it for fountain syrups, while liquor dealers used it for cordials. A squirt of cherry syrup in cola became a fixture at American diners and drugstore fountains long before bottled cherry colas appeared. Cherryade and other cherry sodas followed. Today the United States presses large volumes of juice and concentrate, especially from Montmorency tart cherries grown in Michigan and Wisconsin. This tart juice is sold diluted and sweetened, carbonated, or concentrated, and is often marketed as a wellness drink, though claims such as better sleep lack strong evidence. Cherry juice also finds its way into craft beers and ciders, and tart cherry syrups and shrubs feature in contemporary low- and no-alcohol mixed drinks.[1]
References
- [1]EncyclopediaCherry juice — Wikipedia↑§1↑§7
- [2]EncyclopediaCherry — Wikipedia↑§2
- [3]EncyclopediaKriek lambic — Wikipedia↑§3
- [4]EncyclopediaMaraschino — Wikipedia↑§4
- [5]EncyclopediaRatafia — Wikipedia↑§5
- [6]EncyclopediaFruit wine — Wikipedia↑§6
- [7]Producerhttps://www.non.world/products/stewed-cherry-coffee↑prepared