Vintage Candy Monday: Big Cherry
Editor's Note: We're back with Vintage Candy Monday, in celebration of Halloween. This week, the presence of maraschino cherries in candy. Do you agree?
I fear maraschino cherries. Ever since my mom limited my Shirley Temple intake "because that red dye will probably give you cancer," I have associated maraschino cherries with death. But, I realize that maraschino cherry lovers lurk, much like the grape candy enthusiasts, and I'm happy they have this outlet: the Big Cherry.
The Big Cherry started in 1887 with Christopher's Candy, the oldest candy company in Southern California, later acquired by Sunkist Candy. Each individually-wrapped candy contains a real maraschino at the center mixed with bright pink goo and layered with chocolate and peanut hunks. Golf ball-sized, this is a three-biter.
Unlike me, our intern Kerry Saretsky adores the "saccharine, inimitable flavor and texture of the maraschino cherry." She even orders grenadine with soda water and a handful of cherries at bars, because apparently Shirley Temples aren't cherry enough for her. Where do you stand on the maraschino cherry issue?
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30 Comments:
beurck!
Cookieeater at 8:16PM on 10/27/08
When I was ten, I opened a jar of cherries that had been sitting in the fridge for months and ate a few. Thanksgiving morning, my mother goes to make some monstrosity of a gelatin mold, and discovers a few had been pilfered. I believe there were some obscenities screamed (I mean, more than the usual obscenities screamed when the family gets together) and I spent Thanksgiving in my room without dinner-which was actually kind of relief. If I'd have known I could get out of Thanksgiving I'd have been eating up the cherries years before.
Still like them though-have three jars in the pantry right now. I've never seen that candy-I might try my hand at making a homemade version.
Goodythecook at 8:29PM on 10/27/08
Maraschino cherries may be the most vile food on the planet! EWWW! I hate them on sundaes, and worst of all, when they ruin my Coke at "fancy" restaurants!
bobcatsteph3 at 8:54PM on 10/27/08
yum, that candy looks so good... i like them, i guess...i mean, i dont have issues with them. i rarely eat them. i loooved them when i was little, though.
delilah at 8:58PM on 10/27/08
I love maraschinos, esp in coke. Plus I can tie the stems in a knot with my tongue :)
alclyp at 9:05PM on 10/27/08
In Canada we have Cherry Blossoms, a very similar type of candy - worth buying about once ayear when in need of a major sugar rush.
I love the cherry in my Manhattan...
PeanutButter at 9:10PM on 10/27/08
I thought this was a cherry mash. Is there a difference? (going off to hide from cherry candy enthusiasts now...)
sixsonnets at 9:17PM on 10/27/08
Love them! One of my students gave me a jar of cherries as a "thanks for a great year" present.
Joyous at 9:25PM on 10/27/08
I have to agree with PeanutButter (great name by the way), the cherry is the best part of the Manhattan.
My mom loves maraschino cherries but thinks eating them directly out of the jar is bad, so she piles 5-10 on her sundaes, and eats all the cherries in the can of fruit cocktail.
ag3208 at 10:00PM on 10/27/08
mmmm i love maraschino cherries and this candy looks beyond great!!
teenagefoodie at 10:33PM on 10/27/08
i believe it was ogden nash who put it best:
"this sickly artificial sweet
is bad to look at, and worse to eat.
and heaven knows the pains i take
to scrape them off ice cream or cake."
{sorry, but it's probably not exact quote -- it rattles around in my brain, and has for years.}
cybercita at 11:03PM on 10/27/08
Oh man, I love them. My friends and I have a running joke that it's absurd how much we covet them in our sundaes, especially since we're all well into our 30s and can buy a jar whenever we damn well please. Still, there's something about getting one on a sundae that makes it so much sweeter.
BangieB at 11:07PM on 10/27/08
Dad wouldn't let us eat them. He said they were full of Red Dye #2, or was it #3? Whichever, apparently the dye was supposed to cause cancer, and they were pretty gross anyway.
emilydev at 11:10PM on 10/27/08
I love maraschino cherries. my sisters and i used to buy whole jars at the grocery store and eat them on the walk home.
My favorite part of n amaretto sour!
mayoxqueen at 11:23PM on 10/27/08
I am always happy to see a marashino cherry. I love them.
smile at 12:02AM on 10/28/08
It tastes funky and just plain yucky.
PattyCho at 12:53AM on 10/28/08
I love them! I randomly just take one out of the jar in the fridge when I'm browsing for other things, and off the bar when at work. I love them in Coke, and inside chocolate ala chocolate covered cherries. I do not like Big Cherries though; it's the nuts.
Tahitinova at 2:34AM on 10/28/08
ag3208 "eats all the cherries in the can of fruit cocktail."
I do that too!
Tahitinova at 2:36AM on 10/28/08
Of course.. it doesn't help my nickname is Cherry (My name is Cherish)
Tahitinova at 2:58AM on 10/28/08
I *adore* maraschino cherries. I haven been known to eat an entire jar of them with a fork in one sitting, then pour 7up in the leftover juice and drink that.
...I just realized how weird that is.
cupcakekelly at 5:54AM on 10/28/08
The Manhattan: the manliest drink with a cherry in it.
[Love maraschino cherries]
[[& Manhattans]]
PeteRepeat42 at 7:52AM on 10/28/08
When I was in high school I remember reading Craig Claiborne's comment that "the three worst foods begin with the letter 'M' --- marshmallows, marzipan and maraschino cherries." I disagreed with him then, and I disagree with him these many decades later.
richard dilallo at 9:57AM on 10/28/08
Mmmmaraschino cherries. There are few cherry related food, or food-like-substances that I don't enjoy, and to this day I hope someone at the table is one of the Maraschino Cherry haters like the above, so I can snag theirs and have an extra one...
seadkdc at 10:33AM on 10/28/08
Love.
dove3579 at 10:53AM on 10/28/08
No, thank you.
Kerosena at 11:58AM on 10/28/08
I've never seen the Big Cherry before, but man do I love the Twin Bing. Pretty much the same thing, I think
BlueCheezit at 12:06PM on 10/28/08
love them!
sfred at 12:08PM on 10/28/08
I don't mind the occasional maraschino cherry, but Big Cherry is disgusting. Far too sweet, almost to the point of bitter.
me3dia at 12:31PM on 10/28/08
Yum! Every once in awhile I'll get a fresh raw almond that has that same flavour and I'll think, "Mmm ... cherries." It's funny (to me) that I have that association in one direction, but not the other.
jeninewsbite at 3:07PM on 10/28/08
Ahem, well, no wonder Shirley Temples were not cherry enough for her... grenadine's made with pomegranate juice, not cherries. (Well, the real stuff, at least. The stuff you find most places is just artificially flavored corn syrup made from NO juice).
I LOVE big cherries in the same way I love most other things I can only handle a few times a year. Whenever I go on a long road trip, I seem to always have to have a Big Cherry and a McDonald's cheeseburger, two things I'd avoid like the plague in my day-to-day life.
Tactful_Cactus at 6:57PM on 10/29/08