A few days ago I stood in the grocery shop and while browsing the fruit shelves I realised: Not only had I not eaten a single sweet cherry this year, I also found myself blissfully unaware of WHAT sweet cherries actually ARE. I remember on our family property we had two cherry trees: One with sweet cherries and one with sour. But what on earth is the difference? We only ate the sweet ones raw (if we were lucky enough to get some before the birds took them). The sour ones were always used for cake or jam, or bottled and THEN used for cake. I’ve never eaten one of those raw in my entire life. So I did a little digging, because that’s what scientists do.
Both sweet and sour (or tart) cherries come from the same species namely Prunus sp. Funny enough, sweet cherries originate from the Prunus avium, also called bird cherry, because of the obvious reason I already stated: Birds love them, like hell. Sour cherries in contrast come from Prunus cerasus, but the difference is often unclear and made of purely classical criteria (appearance of leaves, flowers, and fruit). Honestly nobody is going to take a DNA-Test just to check. But it might be that the sour cherry Prunus cerasus is actually a hybrid between Prunus avium and Prunus fruticosa, also called the European dwarf-cherry. Little input here: Taxonomy is quite the large field with a huge number of pitfalls; so my personal recommendation: Don’t waste too much time with it. However, seemingly cherries were cultivated by the ancient Greeks, and brought to Europe from Turkey (did they want to be called something else? Let me check… ah yes Türkiye.. apologies) by the ancient Romans.
Interestingly it turns out: Sweet cherries are actually quite sour, with a pH of 3.8 their acidity is comparable to some vinegar or wine. What makes the sweet cherry appear less sour is their sugar content. On some more or less determined reason the taste of food is measured along the sweet to sour ratio; or in more scientific terms: the soluble solid concentration (SSC) and titratable acidity (TA) ratio (SSC/TA). Which is, let’s be honest, only a fancy formulation of “how much sugar in comparison to how much acid”, because yes sugars are soluble and acids are titratable. And this particular ratio is higher in sweet cherries than in sour, so they contain more sugar, which makes them more sweet (surprise). But before you skip the sour cherries completely because of too high in acids, have a look at the following table:
Here you can see that tart cherries have less calories, while containing far more vitamin A and β-carotene. It is also stated in this table (which I took with many thanks from Blando and Oomah [1]), that sour cherries are also higher in total phenol content and therefore showing higher antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties compared to their sweet sisters. I could probably write a whole post on why phenols are showing antioxidant capacity and why that’s a good thing despite the sound of pure chemistry, but just remember for the moment: High content in antioxidants is why lemon juice will prevent your cut apples from getting brown. In short they prevent unwanted reactions from taking place, which is fabulous. The good stuff of the cherries, sweet or sour, sits not so much in the flesh, but rather in the skin. So make sure you chew that one nicely. Overall cherries have been shown to help in muscle recovery, gout-attacks and prevent cognitive decline associated with ageing (God I have to get this stuff now).
For those who eat with their eyes: According to Gonçalves et al. the bioactive compount content of cherries correlates with their hue and chroma. In short: They found out that the darker and redder the cherry the more anthocyanins it contained and the healthier they are. So you can actually SEE which cherries are the healthiest. How convenient.
Puh. I feel so much more educated about cherries now. Take the dark and red ones, go for sour. My personal suggestion: If you don’t want to actually eat the sour ones, cherry juice is mostly made of sour cherries, so you could go for this one. Just make sure they did not add sugar along the way, unless of course you are the type for type 2 diabetes.
If you want to have a delicious dish with cherries, I will add a nice cherry cake recipe in the next few days.
References
- Blando, F.; Oomah, B.D. Sweet and sour cherries: Origin, distribution, nutritional composition and health benefits. Trends in Food Science & Technology 2019, 86, 517–529, doi:10.1016/j.tifs.2019.02.052.
- Gonçalves, B.; Silva, A.P.; Moutinho-Pereira, J.; Bacelar, E.; Rosa, E.; Meyer, A.S. Effect of ripeness and postharvest storage on the evolution of colour and anthocyanins in cherries (Prunus avium L.). Food Chemistry 2007, 103, 976–984, doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2006.08.039
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