How are French Glacé Cherries made

How Glace Cherries Are Made

In short: The production of French Glacé Cherries consists of replacing the fruit’s natural water content with sugar.

Important: Only firm-fleshed cherry varieties are used. These are easier to de-stem, and the stones are more easily removed, resulting in cherries staying whole throughout the candying process.

Method

Step 1: The preparation of the fruit. After pitting, de-stemming and grading the cherries are plunged into boiling water to increase the permeability of the pericarp (the flesh and skin layer). The cherries are then refreshed in cold water.

Step 2: The cherries are left to steep in a series of sucrose and glucose syrups, each more concentrated than the last, in order to gradually replace the water content of the fruit by sugar. The absorption of sugars needs to be regular, slow and steady to avoid the risk of crystallisation.

The secret of French quality

It takes about 10 days for a tray of fresh cherries to become glacé cherries. This is achieved using a gentle, unhurried process perfected by French confectioners over the centuries. It is this that gives French Glacé Cherries their unique quality and taste.

By the time the candying process is complete, the sugar syrup will have steeped right through to the centre of the cherries, in what confectioners sometimes call “nourishment to the heart.”
The process ends by draining the cherries of excess syrup.

GlaceCherriesCup
GlaceCherriesQuality

The French Glacé Cherries Quality Guarantee:
The production of French Glacé Cherries follows very high quality standards: the cleanliness of storage areas is strictly controlled and final sorting is carried out manually to ensure the quality of the finished glacé cherries.