Is It True Maraschino Cherries Were Invented in Oregon?

Is it true that maraschino cherries were invented in Oregon? —Shirley Temple

It would certainly be reasonable to assume that maraschinos, with their siliconelike consistency and radioactive coloring, would have been created from whole cloth (or perhaps whole vinyl) in America’s early 20th century, when the less a food resembled anything found in nature, the better people liked it (Jell-O, Spam, American cheese)

Moreover, Oregon, with its robust cherry-growing industry, would seem a likely place of origin (assuming you believe actual cherries are used in the manufacture of maraschino cherries, which is not entirely obvious). And that’s almost how it happened, but not quite.

The first maraschino cherries came, not from Oregon, but from Dalmatia, now part of Croatia. The people there used the local marasca cherries (a small, dark and sour fruit whose name actually means “bitter”) to make a liqueur, maraschino, that’s still made today. For laughs, the Dalmatians* would sometimes pickle their sour cherries in the sweet liqueur to create a delicacy that, by the mid-19th century, had caught on among well-heeled tastemakers throughout Europe.

Soon enough, copycat American tourists had cottoned on, and a brisk trade in pricey, imported maraschino cherries sprang up. Oregon growers, who were hip-deep in local Queen Anne cherries, wanted a piece of this market, but there was a problem: Queen Annes become mushy when preserved: unacceptable to American maraschino fanciers.

Enter horticulturalist and Oregon State University professor Ernest H. Wiegand. The story goes that a group of cherry growers came to Wiegand begging for a solution, but it’s possible he took up the problem on his own initiative. At any rate, by 1925 Wiegand had developed a method of brining Oregon cherries in a bath of calcium salts, turning the rustic European cherries of the past into the shiny, plasticized fruit of tomorrow, ready to take their place alongside Twinkies, Cool Whip, Velveeta and all the other immortals of the American culinary pantheon.

Today, Oregon is more or less the maraschino cherry capital of the world, home to three of the world’s leading producers and still a hub of maraschino cherry scholarship. Indeed, some four decades after Wiegand’s discovery, one of his former students discovered a process for bleaching the cherries a “uniform white,” allowing them to be dyed green, blue, yellow or any color manufacturers chose. Mark my words: By 2030, they’ll have clear ones.

*Don’t pretend you’re not imagining spotted dogs stuffing cherries into jars.

Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.