Modern cookery, in all its branches

Cherries, stoned, 8 lbs. ; sugar, 4 lbs. : 10 minutes. Left two or three days. Boiled again, 10 minutes; left two days; drained and dried. CHERRIES DRIED WITHOUT SUGAR. These are often more pleasant and refreshing to invalids and travellers than a sweetened confection of the fruit, their flavour and agreeable acidity being well preserved when they are simply spread on dishes or hamper-lids, and slowly dried.* Throw aside the bruised and decayed fruit, and arrange the remainder singly, and with the stalks uppermost on the dishes. The Kentish cherries are best for the purpose, but morellas also answer for it excellently. The former are sometimes stoned, and simmered until quite tender in their own juice, before they are dried; but this is scarcely an improvement on the more usual method of leaving them entire. [illustration: *The dishes on which they are laid should be changed daily.] [chap. xxiv. TO DRY MORELLA CHERRIES. Take off the stalks hut do not stone the fruit ; weigh and add to it an equal quantity of the best sugar reduced quite to powder, strew it over the cherries and let them stand for half an hour ; then turn them gently into a preserving-pan, and simmer them softly from five to seven minutes. Drain them from the syrup, and dry them like the Kentish cherries. They make a very fine confection. COMMON CHERRY CHEESE. Stone the fruit, or if this trouble be objected to, bruise and boil it without, until it is sufficiently tender to press through a sieve, which it will be in from twenty to thirty minutes. Weigh the pulp in this case, and boil it quickly to a dry paste, then stir to it six ounces of sugar for the pound of fruit, and wrhen this is dissolved, place the pan again over, but not upon , a brisk fire, and stir the preserve without ceasing, until it is so dry as not to adhere to the finger when touched ; then press it immediately into small moulds or pans, and turn it from them when wanted for table. When the cherries have been stoned, a good common preserve may be made of them without passing them through a sieve, with the addition of five ounces of sugar to the pound of fruit, which must be boiled very dry both before and after it is added. Kentish or Flemish cherries without stoning : 20 to 30 minutes. Passed through a sieve. To each pound of pulp (first boiled dry), 6 oz. sugar. To each pound of cherries stoned and boiled to a dry paste, 5 oz. sugar. CHERRY PASTE. (FRENCH.) Stone the cherries ; boil them gently in their own juice for thirty minutes ; press the whole through a sieve ; reduce it to a very dry paste ; then take it from the fire, and weigh it ; boil an equal proportion of sugar to the candying point; mix the fruit with it; and stir the paste, without intermission, over a moderate fire, until it is again so dry as to form a ball round the spoon, and to quit the preserving-pan entirely; press it quickly into small moulds, and when it is cold, paper, and store it like other preserves. STRAWBERRY JAM. Strip the stalks from some fine scarlet strawberries, weigh, and boil them for thirty-five minutes, keeping them very constantly stirred ; throw in eight ounces of good sugar, beaten small, to the pound of fruit ; mix them well off the fire, then boil the preserve again quickly for twenty- five minutes.