Bing is the most common black cherry in the world. I made a black cherry vanilla preserve using them with very good results.

If you can find them, Lambert is a wonderful black heritage variety.

Carol

Thanks, Carol! I've got 17 pounds of bings I picked yesterday, so I should be set :-)

Interesting -- I would call Bing a sweet cherry, as distinct from a sour (pie) cherry like Montmorency or a true black cherry (prunus serotina) which grow wild. Black cherry fruit are nothing like Bing or other sweet cherries.

It is a sweet cherry. The problem is locating other black (or dark, if you like) cherry varieties. Most are sweet. Certainly dark sweet cherries are used in many European preserves. Swiss black cherry jam is made from Guines, which are sweet.

It's even more difficult to find a dark sour cherry. Not to mention many are incredibly sour and/or bitter and would require a great deal of sugar (to my taste). But black Morello would be nice, if you could ever find some.

Lots of Ferber's recipes are "lost in translation." It's darned near impossible to approximate her preserves. On the other hand, if you like what you come up with, it's probably irrelevant. Americans have an almost limitless sweet tooth compared to Europeans, anyway.

Carol

I've always assumed Ferber was referring to prunus serotina in her black cherry recipes, and not to a sweet cherry (however dark it may be). True black cherries (prunus serotina) are used extensively in juices and preserves in the new world at least.

Here is a link that might be useful: Prunus Serotina

maymd - since Ferber is French I very much doubt she was thinking of P serotina since they are native to N America and are not commonly found in France, or indeed anywhere in Europe. Here 'black cherries' are cultivated sweet cherries of various varieties. The link has a picture of the typical type but it does not specify a variety, just black cherries from the writer's in laws' old tree in the village. But they are clearly large fruited and dark skinned, not P serotina.

Sorry - don't seem to have given the link.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cerises noires

Well, I made the conserve with Bing cherries last weekend. What a fabulous recipe! I have to say I've never before eaten a cherry conserve that I actually liked, but the wine in this one adds a lovely depth and complexity (not just alcohol!).

My only misstep was trying to substitute commercial pectin for the green apple jelly Ferber used, since I don't have any of the latter. Embarrassing to admit, but I've never used added pectin before, and I really screwed it up. My conserve thickened nicely, but I ended up with some ugly white clumps of undissolved pectin. So now I have several jars of a delicious conserve that I'll be sharing with close friends and family only.

Live and learn!

Another Ferber adaption tip -- in lieu of the apple jelly, try a large tablespoon of liquid pectin. Works pretty well.

Re p. serontina -- so many of our native trees have made their way to the old country, for all I know, p. serotina is quite common. I had never been to any of her blogs, and just put my trust in editors (never a good idea).

FWIW, I've used both Montmorency and Northstar cherries in her Morello cherry recipes with great success.