Maraschino Cherries

Maraschino cherries do not grow on trees (yes, I actually knew someone who thought that, but then he also thought trees that dropped their leaves were dead); rather, they are something made, something transformed. They have always been about starting out as one thing and ending up another. Who would have predicted cherries pickled in seawater and marinated in a liqueur would have caught the attention of well-heeled folks throughout Europe and then become all the rage in the United States, largely bobbing around in cocktails like the Manhattan?

A New York Times story from Jan. 2, 1910, captured the nation's maraschino-cherry mania:

"A young woman engaged a room at a fashionable hotel and, after ordering a Manhattan cocktail, immediately sent for another. Soon she was ordering them by the dozen. The management interfered and someone was sent to expostulate with her; also to find out how she had been able to consume so many cocktails. She was found surrounded by the full glasses with the cherry gone."

Unfortunately for her, the less expensive "Shirley Temple" was another twenty years in the making, either invented at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel at Waikīkī in Honolulu, Hawaii, or Chasen's Restaurant in Beverly Hills, California.

Members of the country's growing temperance movement weren't too hot on a hooch-soaked cherry, especially when it started landing atop ice-cream sundaes. Manufacturers were using all sorts of things other than alcohol to make maraschinos, long before Prohibition passed, which is where the FDA steps in.

This week a look at the maraschino cherry.

TTFN, Fred.

Quote of the week: "Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget." - G. Randolf

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