10/16/2004:
It was on this date in1959 that the Fargo Forum published an article about chocolate covered cherries called “Mystery is Revealed.”
The article read: Probably one of the most mysterious secrets of the candy industry…is the secret of how the liquid gets inside a cordial cherry. The average person’s imagination has run the gamut of plausible and impossible procedures to the point where someone thought the juice was injected into each cherry with a hypodermic needle.
The article went on to explain that maraschino cherries were first rolled in sugar with a bit of yeast added to make the sugar more soluble. The cherries were then quickly covered with melted chocolate. This caused the sugar to dissolve in the cherry’s natural juice, making a thick syrupy liquid inside the candy. The cordializing process took about two weeks.
Dakota Datebook written by Merry Helm