Cherry Sauce

Sauce aux Cerises (Cherry Sauce) teaches proportion before anything else: the syrup drained from stewed cherries and the red-currant jelly meet in equal measure. The jelly is not decoration and not merely more sweetness. Its tartness supplies the edge cooked cherries lose, while its pectin gives the sauce a clear, generous gloss.

The original instruction assumes a pan of stewed cherries already in service and a saucier who can take syrup from it without being told how much. At home, the honest equivalent is one batch of cherries, one sieve, and a measuring jug. Keeping fruit simmering through a full service was brigade scaffolding and can go; the equal measure and the kirsch finish are the dish and must stay. This batch makes about two quarts, one cook, one stove, one evening, and changes nothing except making the hidden preparation and quantity explicit.

Measure only after straining. That is the step that decides the sauce: guess at the syrup and the jelly becomes either a sweet lump or a thin afterthought; match it exactly, warm gently, and the Sauce aux Cerises pours in a wine-dark ribbon over a plain cake, crêpes, or cold cream.