Ingredient

Cherry

There are two cherries and they are genuinely different fruits. Sweet cherries are for eating raw. Sour cherries — morello, amarena, Montmorency — are almost inedible raw and are what nearly every great cherry dish is actually made from. Most disappointing cherry cooking comes from using the first where the second was meant.

Two species, one word

Sweet cherries are Prunus avium — firm, dark, high in sugar, low in acid. Sour cherries are Prunus cerasus — softer, brighter red, markedly acidic, and full of flavour that survives heat.

Heat flattens a sweet cherry. The sugar is already high, the acid is low, and what is left after twenty minutes in an oven is sweetness with nothing behind it. A sour cherry cooked with sugar becomes intense and complex, which is why a proper Black Forest gateau, a clafoutis or a Hungarian cherry soup uses them.

Sour cherries are hard to buy fresh in Britain. Bottled morellos in syrup, or frozen sour cherries, are the practical answer and are genuinely good.

The ones you will meet

Sweet, dark

Bing, Lapins, Kordia, Regina. Deep red to near-black, firm, sweet. Eating fruit.

Sweet, pale

Rainier, Napoleon. Yellow with a red blush, delicate, expensive, and best raw.

Sour

Morello — dark and very sharp; Montmorency — bright red, the standard American pie cherry; amarena — small, Italian, usually preserved.

Glacé

Sweet cherries stripped of flavour and impregnated with sugar syrup. A confectionery ingredient rather than a fruit.

Wild

The gean or wild cherry is small, variable and usually sharp. Worth trying if you find one.

Stoning them without a machine

A cherry stoner is worth having if you do a lot. Otherwise:

1. Push the stone through with a chopstick or a piping nozzle, working over a bowl. Fast, but the fruit ends up holed.
2. Or press the cherry onto the neck of a bottle and push with a chopstick, which catches the stones tidily.
3. Or halve the cherry around the stone with a small knife and twist, which keeps the fruit neat and is slower.
4. Or use a paperclip bent into an S, hooking the stone out through the stem hole. Genuinely effective.
5. Wear an apron. Cherry juice stains, particularly the sour ones.
6. For a clafoutis, consider leaving them in — traditional, adds a faint almond note from the kernel, and requires warning your guests.

What to make

• Clafoutis, the French batter pudding, which is the single best use of a glut.
• Cherry jam, which needs help — cherries are low in pectin and low in acid, so lemon juice and jam sugar or a high-pectin partner are required.
• With duck or venison, where a sharp cherry sauce is the classic and works like redcurrant but fruitier.
• Preserved in brandy or kirsch with sugar, which is easy, keeps for a year and improves anything it touches.
• Cherry and almond anything. The affinity is real: the kernel is closely related to a bitter almond.
• Sour cherry soup, chilled, Hungarian, with soured cream — strange to British ears and very good.
• Pickled cherries with vinegar and warm spice, served with cold meats or cheese.

Common questions