Cherries (fresh, pitted)

One US cup of cherries (fresh, pitted) weighs 154 grams. Going the other way, 100 grams is about 0.65 cups.

Also called fresh cherries, cherries, pitted cherries, sweet cherries, cherries pitted chopped, cherries fresh pitted, bing cherries, dark sweet cherries.

Fresh sweet cherries publish at 154 grams per cup pitted, with two authoritative sources in close agreement. USDA SR Legacy record 171719 (Cherries, sweet, raw) publishes 154 g/cup measured as pitted whole cherries loose in the cup, giving density 0.6509 g/mL. King Arthur's Ingredient Weight Chart publishes 160 g/cup for the fresh, pitted, chopped state, giving density 0.6763 g/mL. The 3.9% gap between them is well inside the 10% milled tolerance and reflects the small density gain from chopping already-small round fruit.

Chopping adds less density gain for cherries than it does for larger fruits like peaches or pears. A cherry is already a small (~2 cm) round fruit that packs fairly densely as whole, with the pit-cavity leaving only a small internal air pocket after pitting. Chopping the pitted cherry into halves or smaller pieces helps fill some interstitial space between the whole pieces, but the density gain is modest because the whole cherries were already close to a natural packing limit. Compare this to the peaches-fresh entry where dicing gained about 10% density over slicing, and the strawberries-sliced entry where slicing gained 15% over whole. Small round starting shapes benefit less from cutting than large irregular ones do.

USDA's parallel publish of 'with pits yields 138 g' is a useful data point most bakers never see. It says that if you measure 1 cup of unpitted sweet cherries and then pit them, you end up with 138 g of edible flesh. That is a ~10% loss to pits (pits account for 10-15% of unpitted cherry mass). A baker with unpitted cherries can therefore estimate: to get 1 cup pitted, start with about 1.1 cups unpitted (which yields ~154 g of flesh after pitting matches the 1-cup-pitted measurement).

Sweet cherries (Bing, Rainier, dark sweet) and sour cherries (Montmorency) have similar packing density despite very different flavor profiles. USDA's separate record for 'Cherries, sour, red, raw' publishes a similar cup portion (about 155 g/cup without pits), so this entry applies reasonably well to tart cherries too. The 63 kcal/100g figure for sweet cherries is higher than sour (50 kcal/100g), reflecting sugar content, but that composition difference does not move the packing density much.

King Arthur's chart contains three other cherry states worth flagging for comparison. Candied cherries at 200 g/cup are the densest (concentrated sugar syrup adds mass), dried cherries at 142 g/cup are lighter than fresh (water loss shrinks the piece but the piece stays small enough to pack tightly), and frozen cherries at 113 g/cup are the lightest of the cherry family because frozen cherries are whole and loose in the cup rather than chopped, so the interstitial air gaps between whole cherries dominate. The frozen-vs-fresh pattern here (113 vs 160) is the same physics as the strawberries whole-vs-sliced pattern (144 vs 166): cutting a small round fruit into pieces meaningfully increases cup density.

Category assignment is milled, following the fresh fruit precedent established by blueberries-fresh, raspberries-fresh, cranberries-fresh, and the fresh cut fruit entries (apple-slices, pineapple-diced, strawberries-sliced, peaches-fresh, pears-fresh). Fresh whole small pitted fruits belong in milled rather than sugar because they are water-containing solid pieces (86% water for sweet cherries) whose packing depends on shape and fill method rather than crystal structure. Dried cherries and candied cherries, when eventually added, will belong in sugar because the water loss concentrates them into small dense sweet particulates similar to raisins and currants.

Confidence is medium. Two authoritative sources (USDA SR Legacy and King Arthur) agree at 3.9%, well within tolerance. The published figure of 154 g/cup reflects USDA's direct portion for pitted whole cherries and closely matches KA's 160 g/cup for the chopped state. Bakers can use 154 g/cup for pitted whole and expect slightly higher (up to ~160 g) if they chop before measuring.