What To Do With a Bowl Full of Cherries
What To Do With a Bowl Full of Cherries
Two versions of an easy, delicious (and healing?) Renaissance cherry recipe
We’re coming up on one of my favorite times of the year. Cherry season!
As a child living in Washington State, I grew up eating sweet Rainier cherries. We even had a cherry tree in our backyard. I remember my mother canning them every summer (and here’s a link to a recipe if you want to go nuts), and having a bowl full of preserved cherries in the middle of winter was a special treat.
I’m not the only one that has grown up with a love of cherries. Millions of people all over the world, through the centuries, have loved this tiny fruit. The first record we have of the cherry was that Roman consul, politician, and military conqueror Lucius Licinius Lucullus brought them to Rome from Türkiye in roughly 72 B.C. I wrote my first novel, Feast of Sorrow, about the first-century ancient gourmand, Apicius, whose name is on the oldest known cookbook—a cookbook that includes instructions on how to preserve cherries.
When I was researching my novel, The Chef’s Secret, I discovered that in the Renaissance, often a chef was as important to helping the ill and wounded as a physician might be. This is evident in Bartolomeo Scappi's 1570 cookbook, which has 218 recipes specific for the sick. These recipes include "prepared potions, broths, concentrates, pastes, barley dishes and many other preparations needed by the sick and convalescent. Interestingly enough, some of the most delicious recipes among the thousands in his cookbook appear in this section, especially sweet dishes.
L’Opera di Bartolomeo Scappi (the works of Bartolomeo Scappi) contained over 1,000 recipes and was a bestseller for nearly 200 years after his death. There are 26 recipes for cherry dishes, including pies, pastries, and sops. Sops were traditionally served to the ill and infirm. But what are sops? Do you know of the dish “Shit on a Shingle” (chipped beef on toast, a popular military ration in the past)? That is an example of a sop, which is any type of sauce meant to be served on toast. Bread that sops up liquid. Also, if you read my post about picky eating, one of the dishes that my mom used to make was shit on a shingle, but she always used hamburger or tuna in a white sauce.
One of the sweet sop recipes that Scappi shares is for cherries. This dish is extraordinarily simple and hearty, and I can attest to the fact that if I were sick and someone served it to me, I'd probably down every last bit of it. But it's even more delicious if you are healthy and want a bit of dessert.
The original recipe:
Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera Book VI.135
To prepare sops with visciola cherries or morello cherries get one or the other. They should be fresh and not too ripe and picked immediately before. For every two pounds of them get two thirds of a litre of white wine, four ounces of fresh butter and four ounces of sugar. Bring that to a boil until the wine has coloured. Have slices of bread ready, braised and fried in butter, and when they are set out in dishes, pour some of the visciola cherry juice over them, then put the cherries on them with sugar.
I wasn’t the only one drawn to this recipe or to Scappi. Kate Quinn, the bestselling author of The Alice Network and The Diamond Eye, offers her own wildly different yet wonderful take on Scappi in her fantastic series, The Borgia Chronicles, and when The Serpent and the Pearl came out, she developed her own version of his cherry sops. I was delighted to discover that our recipes were just as different as the characters we created in our novels. Below you’ll find both of our recipes. If you try them out, let us know what you think!
Crystal’s Cherry Sops
serves 4 people
1 lb cherries (.45 kg)
1/3 liter white wine
4 oz. butter (113 g) (and more for toasting bread)
1/4 cup sugar (50 g)
Loaf of crusty Italian or sourdough bread
Melt 4 oz. butter in a saucepan, then add wine. Bring to a boil (until the wine has colored).
Add sugar and cherries. Cook for 20-30 minutes until it's a thick syrup, stirring occasionally. Watch to make sure it doesn't boil over.
Right before the cherries are about done, fry bread slices in a skillet with butter.
Pour cherries on toasted bread and sprinkle with sugar.
Kate Quinn’s Hot Sops With Cherries
Serves 2 — Prep: 15 minutes
1 can cherries in water (NOT cherry pie filling)
4 slices of good fresh-baked artisan bread
1 cup red wine
Butter
4 tsp sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1. Butter the bread slices on both sides and fry in a skillet over medium heat, flipping once. Set aside.
2. Reduce heat to medium. Drain the cherries and add to a medium saucepan (we improvised with a wok) and add the wine plus 4 tsp sugar and 1 tsp each cinnamon and nutmeg.
3. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently until the liquid reduces down to a thick syrupy texture, adding more sugar or spices to taste.
4. Serve in a bowl with fried bread for dipping. Messy in the best possible way!
For more Renaissance Recipes, you can:
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What’s Bringing Me Joy This Week:
Saw Crowded House this week and had a surprise text from a colleague from my Sybase days who said she thought of me because she was in town from the West Coast and had bought a solo ticket to go—we had gone together to see them on another rare visit to Boston 13 years ago! So, of course, we met up again! It was a fantastic show. Neil Finn’s two sons, Liam and Elroy, played in the band. And they rocked a bit of Split Enz too!
A Redditor asked ChatGPT to describe a world where the power structures are reversed, and the images and ideas are stunning. If only. An example:
Do you remember the marble shooting game, Zuma? Turns out you can play dozens of versions of it online!
If you work from home but want to feel like you are amidst a bustling cafe crowd, Coffitivity is the site for you.
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