wild fruit

A simple sweet and sour syrup made from berries and fruits with lots of seeds or skin. Yield: about 4 cups.

Sweet and Sour Cherry, Berry or Grape Syrup

chokecherries

water (or substitute fruit juice

white wine vinegar

sugar

salt

Wash the berries, then add the water, and vinegar to the pot.

The berries should be just barely covered by liquid, with a few bobbing around here and there, a technical term we call “floating hippos” in the kitchen.

Bring the pot to a simmer, cover, and cook for 15 minutes on low heat. Mash the berries, or use a hand blender to break them up, simmer for a few minutes more, then strain the liquid and combine it with it’s volume of sugar (equal parts). Boil for another 5 minutes, or until the syrup barely coats the back of a spoon, then transfer to jars and store. The syrup will be shelf stable canned in small jars and kept in a pantry, frozen, or refrigerated.

Oh right of course vinegar makes total sense, thank you!  I've been meaning to try out vinegar making, especially after seeing your recipe and reading Pascal Baudar's book.  Hopefully there are still some lingering black cherries so I can collect enough to give it a try this year!

I ended up needing to make the gastrique before I saw your response (it came out great, btw, love this recipe!) so I decided to try drying the mash/pits mixture to buy myself some time.  I spread them out in the dehydrator the way you'd do fruit leather, at around 150F, and let it go about two days until it was cracker dry.  I do some hobbyist skincare/haircare formulating so once I saw the color it occurred to me that I could probably extract it into glycerin and at least pull some of the color even if it doesn't retain any of the fruity or almondy scents.  (I've gotten a beautiful, stable color in glycerin from dried elderberries and dried bilberries, so I figured this might be similar.)

I decided to grind the pits/mash and set up a little solvent experiment, trying out 100 gram batches of glycerin, propanediol (basically propylene glycol but derived from corn instead of petroleum), a bio-based butylene glycol, an equal parts mixture of those first three, and a 200 proof culinary solvent that I use for perfume bases, using 30 grams of the dried cherry mash in each.  It's been about five days, and so far all of them have pulled a nice deep red-purple color.  The 200 proof alcohol is pulling that characteristic almond scent nicely, while the other three are more faintly fruity.  I usually let a glycerin or propanediol extraction go for at least a month so I'm going to let them all go a bit longer and see if I get more of the almond scent over time.

I use plum kernel oil a lot in my formulating and it has such a beautiful marzipan scent that comes through pleasantly in an emulsion even when it's heated and only used around 2%.  (I've only ever seen cosmetic grade plum kernel oil but I would love to find a food grade or a foraged plum version.  I can forage beach plums here in NYC but probably not in the kind of quantity I'd need to press my own oil, lol.) I'm hoping to layer those almond notes by combining plum kernel oil, the dried black cherry alcohol, and one or a mix of the black cherry extractions in an emulsion.  I will report back if it works!

Thanks again for your feedback- I feel like you are so thoughtful about responding to your readers and I find a ton of helpful info in the comments section.  I really appreciate it!

Thank you so much!  I will try that tonight!

Thank you for sharing your story and recipe!  I just made sand cherry gastrique from foraged berries because I stumbled upon both the berries on the shores of Lake Michigan, and then your recipe online!  I am enjoying a vodka cocktail with the freshly made gastrique!  Very yummy!  However, I am NO chef.  Any chance you have a salad dressing  recipe using this gastrique?  Or a simple recipe of any sort.  It’s all new to me, but I made a lot!  I really appreciate your inspiring story. I just need more help to use my lovely unique gastrique!!

Ok, I'm very familiar with gastrique, and this is a super sexy, very clean and simple one for all to enjoy. Thank you!! But I'm wondering how to take this flavor profile and turn it into a more of a glaze, like for a Choux pastry ?? Not a frosting mind you, but this wonderfully vibrant cherry / vinegar / color and flavor profile, as a slick sticky stable glaze for an eclair that is piped full of a light airy foie gras mousse? Any thoughts?

Love your site BTW!!!

Delicious made with American Beautyberry.

Thank you so much for this lesson and wonderful sauce! Did with mainly rose hips with touch of cranberry and raspberry. Served with spruce mousse .  Will definitely make again- nice to have a technique to use with awkward seedy wild fruits. Thanks!

I started making this recipe over a year ago. Usually with aronia and elderberry. It is a staple around my kitchen now. I have used it as a drizzle on pawpaw cheesecake, in cocktails &amp; sodas, on pancakes even across salads with lemon and olive oil. I have turned several friends on to the recipe who keep it in hand now also!

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