Candied cherries

One US cup of candied cherries weighs 200 grams (7.1 ounces). Going the other way, 100 grams is about 0.50 cups.

Also called glacé cherries, glace cherries, candied red cherries, candied green cherries, fruitcake cherries.

Dried fruit compared: cup weights side by side, the source behind each, and why they differ.

Cherries compared: cup weights side by side, the source behind each, and why they differ.

A cup of candied cherries weighs 200 g (7.1 oz), a density of 0.85 g/mL. King Arthur and the Waitrose conversion chart both give exactly 200 g for a US cup of glacé cherries. Confidence is low: both are rounded figures from charts that do not say how they measured, and older American tables put cut-up candied fruit lighter, at about 181 g per cup.

Candied, or glacé, cherries are pitted sweet cherries cooked in a series of increasingly strong sugar syrups until the fruit is saturated, then coloured red or green and glazed. They are a fixture of fruitcake, panettone, holiday cookies and Christmas breads. USDA's Standard Reference record for candied fruit (FDC 167781) lists 16.7% water and 80.7% sugars, so the fruit is mostly sugar by weight. In the US they are sold whole or halved in tubs, most widely by Paradise, whose label counts a serving as 5 cherries, about 30 g. The FDA reference amount for candied fruit is 30 g counted in pieces, so no US label gives a cup weight.

King Arthur's ingredient weight chart lists candied cherries at 1/4 cup = 1 3/4 oz = 50 g, 200 g per cup. The Waitrose conversion chart, in its American measurements table, lists glacé cherries at 200 g for 1 cup. Neither says how it was measured, and the Waitrose table rounds other ingredients heavily, putting every flour at 140 g per cup, so the exact agreement is weaker than it looks. That is the reason for low confidence.

Two older references are recorded without a figure because they describe all candied fruit together rather than cherries. The University of Missouri Extension's food yields table, drawing on Joy of Cooking and the American Home Economics Association's Handbook of Food Preparation, gives 1/2 pound of candied fruit or peels as 1 1/4 cups cut up, 181 g per cup. Blue Flame Kitchen in Alberta gives the same equivalent for every candied fruit, cherries, peel, mixed fruit and pineapple alike: 450 g to 500 mL, 213 g per US cup.

The physical check: a syrup-saturated cherry with about 80% sugar solids weighs roughly 1.3 g/mL. Whole cherries are round, about 2 cm across and slightly sticky, and round pieces poured into a cup fill about 60 to 65% of it, which predicts 0.80 to 0.85 g/mL, 190 to 200 g per cup. The 200 g figure fits. The 181 g figure for cut-up fruit is plausible for chopped pieces that cling together and bridge across gaps. The 213 g figure is a round conversion rather than a measurement.

Practical guidance: use 200 g per cup of whole candied cherries, 100 g per half cup and 50 g per quarter cup. A 16 oz (454 g) tub holds about 2 1/4 cups. For chopped cherries in a fruitcake or panettone, weigh them, since chopping changes how the sticky pieces pack. Dried cherries, which are dried rather than saturated with syrup, are lighter, at 142 to 160 g per cup.