Cherry Paste (French)

Instructions

1. Stone the cherries; boil them gently in their own juice for thirty minutes.
2. Press the whole through a sieve; reduce it to a very dry paste; then take it from the fire, and weigh it.
3. Boil an equal proportion of sugar to the candying point; mix the fruit with it.
4. Stir the paste, without intermission, over a moderate fire, until it is again so dry as to form a ball round the spoon, and to quit the preserving-pan entirely.
5. Press it quickly into small moulds, and when it is cold, paper, and store it like other preserves.