How to make Maraschino style candied cherries

Surely many of you are like me, you love candied cherries or Maraschino cherries, but it is not easy to access them in the latter case. In Spain, to buy them, you must always order them through online stores specializing in American products or through Amazon, but at a fairly high price. I had been thinking about making them for some time and, although a little bit short of time, I have come to share with you how to make Maraschino style candied cherries.

Or maybe I should specify… How to make Maraschino-style candied cherries? Because I don’t use Maraschino liqueur and, therefore, they would not be those cherries as such. But their final appearance and texture is practically identical. There is just one small point: they will not be as perfectly round as the commercial ones, although they will not look like raisins either. Of course.

The method to elaborate these Maraschino style candied cherries is very simple, only that you have to carry out a process that will last several days. The same way I did when I made candied melon. But, in this case, it will only take us five minutes a day for 12 days, but I can already tell you that the final result is definitely worth it. We can do the process while we prepare a coffee, a tea or even while we are watering the plants. It is totally compatible with an endless number of simple what-does.

By the way, if you want to know the origin of candied fruits, I tell you in detail in this post.

Differences between black cherry (amarene), sour cherry (visciole) and marasca cherry.

Before telling you a little more about Maraschino cherries, I would like to tell you about the types of sour cherries and the differences between them.

Sour cherries are the fruit of the “Prunus Cerasus“, a variety of cherry tree commonly known as “sour cherry“. They are red drupes (fleshy fruit surrounding a stone) that, once ripe, have a diameter between 1-1.5 cm. They are characterized by a pale flesh and little adhered to the bone. Their flavor is quite sour.

• Black cherry is characterized by a light red color and a slightly sour and bitter taste. For example, Cherry Vladimir, Griot Rossoshansky, Morel Bryanskaya…
• Cherries are characterized by a more intense red color and a slightly sour taste, but with sweet touches. For example, Montmorency, Lapins, Napoleon, Starking cherries…
• The marasco or marasca cherry, is a type of Morello sour cherry with a very bitter and sour taste, accompanied by a red color.

These are catalogued in the variety of cherries, they are characterized by their bitter/acid flavor, hence they are normally used to elaborate candied fruits, in syrup or liquors such as maraschino.

On the other hand we have the Picotas, this is undoubtedly the sweetest and tastiest variety of cherry. Besides having a superior caliber.

Origin of Maraschino cherries.

Maraschino cherries originated in Croatia, historic Dalmatia, and northern Italy about 200 years ago. Traders in these regions used to use a cherry called marasca cherry. It was left to macerate in maraschino liqueur, made from marasca pits and leaves, after being immersed in seawater. The result was an exquisite delicacy with a unique flavor.

The name marasca comes from the Italian word amarasca,from amaro, which in turn comes from the Latin word amārus(meaning “bitter“).

Maraschino liqueur was made from marasca cherries, whose main characteristic was their intense and persistent aroma. Along with this variety of cherry, honey, almonds and sugar were added, resulting in a very particular sweet liqueur.

These maraschino cherries did not reach the United States until the 1890s. They were an imported delicacy for the best hotels and restaurants in the country. They became a popular garnish in desserts and cocktails such as the Piña colada, Cosmopolitan, Miami Beach or the Manhattan. Its sweet taste with bitter touches differentiated it from the flavor of the natural cherry, candied, liqueur cherry or Amarena cherry.

Around 1896, American cherry manufacturers developed their own recipe using a local sweet cherry called Royal Anne cherry and reducing the amount of maraschino liqueur. They replaced part of this maraschino liqueur with almond oil.

Bitter almond oil is still used today to flavor and preserve non-alcoholic maraschino cherries.

In 1912, the FDA declared that the name “maraschino cherries” described only one thing: maraschino cherries preserved in maraschino liqueur.

By 1915, consumption of cherries in the United States had skyrocketed due to “the fashion of adding candied cherries, both for garnish and flavor, to many drinks and ice creams” wrote U.P. Hedrick in a report from the New York Agricultural Experiment Station.

Any other form of production was not true maraschino cherries.

Alternative non-alcoholic cherries, such as Royal Anne cherries soaked in almond oil and flavoring, were to be labeled accordingly.

Some labels include “Imitation Maraschino Cherries” or “preserved cherries with artificial color and flavor”. Which are the vast majority of candied cherries found in stores under the name “Maraschino cherries”.

Oregon began growing its own cherries and at one point they had too many.

In 1919, the idea of maraschino cherries changed completely. A professor at Oregon State University, Ernest Wiegand, was commissioned to create a preservation method for cherries and it was he who perfected the process.

Royal Anne cherries spoiled too quickly, so experts opted for maraschino cherries.

That same year, the 18th Amendment was passed. Alcohol was banned in the United States, which meant that the traditional maraschino cherry preserved in liqueur needed a reinvention. Although it is said that, in reality, Prohibition had nothing to do with the reformulation of cherries. On the contrary, the aim was to improve the process to avoid excessive softening of the cherries.

The professor and Oregon cherry processors reinvented the maraschino cherry brine and eliminated alcohol from the process. This preservation method resembles that used today for preserved cherries or syrup.

Maraschino cherries made with a syrup replaced the alcoholic variant in the United States.

From 1925 to 1931, Wiegand made it his mission.

He works from every angle, consuming kilos of cherries and scribbling formulas in notebooks. And then comes the big moment: Wiegand realizes that if he adds calcium salts to the brine in which the cherries are immersed, they will harden.

In addition to this, he carried out other tweaks, but that’s the big breakthrough.

This was a miracle for Oregon cherry growers because, at last, they could tell East Coast manufacturers what to do with their Italian cherries.

But, serendipity of life, along came a duty that made foreign cherries very expensive to import.

In 1939, the FDA declared that the term “maraschino cherry” was synonymous with the sweet, red, shiny, sugary, canned cherry that everyone loved. Today, any sweet cherry produced and preserved in this way can be labeled as a maraschino cherry.

Making Maraschino-style candied cherries.

Based on the traditional process of confit added to the brine process, similar to the one we carry out with Kimchior Chucrut, we will prepare wonderful candied cherries at home.

As I mentioned above, it is a very simple preparation to carry out, but it requires several days to have them ready. In addition, I will show you how to pit them, with very good results, without the need of a cherry pitter. Then we will subject them to a process of resting with a mild brine and, subsequently, we will begin to candy them little by little with a syrup dyed and flavored with liquor. This can be omitted if you wish, thus making them suitable for everyone.