How the Maraschino Cherry Became a Comfortingly Trashy American Icon

You know maraschino cherries as a bright red garnish for cocktails, ice cream sundaes, and pineapple upside-down cake. There's probably a jar that's been in your refrigerator for years. Maraschinos don't resemble fresh cherries much, in either appearance or taste. So where did they come from, and how did they become a thing? In the early 1800s, the cherry-producing Luxardo family in Italy began to preserve cherries in alcohol. They were the original maraschino cherries, and they became quite popular with the rise of cocktail culture in the latter years of the 19th century. And with popularity, they spread to other manufacturers and evolved with the times.  

Yet it’s also notable that the maraschino cherry’s turn-of-the-century ascendancy also coincided with the wider vogue for lab-made dyes, flavorings and additives that flourished in the pre-FDA era. (Relevant: This was also a time when, at the behest of nervous dairy farmers, margarine had to literally be dyed pink in some states to broadcast the fact it wasn’t butter.) “For many years, I’ve asked audiences at tasting events what maraschino cherries, grenadine and sloe gin have in common,” says Brown. “And the answer, of course, is nothing. Nothing! And yet, go back to my childhood and they were all the same color and flavor because they came from the same lab.”

With Prohibition, the recipe had to change again, which meant maraschino cherries veered even further from nature. Read a history of maraschino cherries, and learn what's in them, at Mel magazine.

(Image credit: Véronique PAGNIER)