Sour Cherry

Prunus cerasus · alu balu · albaloo · morello cherry

The fruit that does the souring in summer.

What it is

Sour cherries are the cooking cherry: smaller and softer than the sweet kind, dark red through to the stone, and sharp enough that nobody eats a bowl of them raw. Cooking brings out a deep, almost wine-like flavour that sweet cherries never reach.

Where it comes from

The tree comes from the lands between the Caspian and the Black Sea and spread east into Iran and Afghanistan and west across Europe. In the cherry season Afghan families put the fruit into a qorma, boil it into jam and juice, and dry it for the winter.

What it's called

Alu balu (Dari) · albaloo (Persian) · morello (English, for the dark sour varieties).

In the kitchen

In qorma-e-alu balu, lamb is braised in the cherries' syrup until the sauce thickens, and the cherries go in only at the end, so they keep their shape and their edge. Dried sour cherries go into haft mewa, the Nowruz compote of seven fruits. Treat them as a souring agent: add them late, and taste for sugar afterwards.

What we know about the claims

The dark colour comes from anthocyanins, and tart cherry juice has a modest body of research behind it for muscle recovery and sleep. The effects in those studies are small and come from concentrated juice, not from a handful in a stew.

Choosing and buying

Jarred Morello cherries in light syrup are the dependable buy: Lidl, Waitrose and Polish shops in the UK, Trader Joe's in the US. Keep the syrup, because the qorma uses it. Frozen sour cherries are at Turkish and Iranian grocers, and dried ones at health food shops and Persian grocers. Fresh sour cherries are a short summer crop and rarely reach a shop.