There are a lot or cocktail recipes that call for a maraschino cherry or two. They mostly make the drink pretty, and I guess if you get used to them, they even taste OK - I usually manage to eat them. Just don't try to fool yourself that they actually taste like cherries. In fact, as early as 1911, a New York Times editorial described a maraschino cherry as "a tasteless, indigestible thing, originally to be sure, a fruit of the cherry tree, but toughened and reduced to the semblance of a formless, gummy lump by long imprisonment in a bottle filled with so-called maraschino." Almost a hundred years later after the turn of the century, another Times item described them as "the culinary equivalent of an embalmed corpse", and that might be a fitting description given what they contain. The cherries shown in the picture above are pretty decent as maraschino cherries go, but they contain all kinds of things that I have reservations about eating: corn syrup and high-fructose corn syrup, Red #40 dye, and several types of chemical preservatives.Lately, I have been seeing quite a number of articles about alternatives that taste better, and any number of recipes about making your own cocktail cherries. Chief among the commercial recommendations is Luxardo Gourmet Maraschino Cherries which you can buy through Amazon.com for about $18. When I saw some fresh cherries at the grocery store today, though, I decided I would try to make some of my own. Aft looking at a bunch of recipes I found on the internet, I decided to use ideas from a number of different versions, and canned my own recipe using sweet bing cherries, Luxardo Cherry Liquor , Brandy, lemon juice, and turbinado sugar. Two pounds of cherries yielded 6 half-pint jars.
They need to sit for a few days, so I can't tell you yet how they turned out. I suspect they will be a little too sweet, but far better than standard maraschino cherries. Next time, I'll try to find some sour cherries, possibly frozen, or I'll use Trader Joe's Morello Cherries, which were recommended in a couple of recipes I saw.
If this batch turns out good, though, I'll publish a recipe in a couple of weeks.
