When it came to cherry preserves, I began to notice a pattern. Domestic preserves would always get pushed aside. But whenever I bought an imported jar from an ethnic or specialty grocer, we'd eat it on everything from bagels to yogurt to index fingers. As a fan of diverse food markets, I've found a lot of excellent cherry preserves out there, including Bosnian, Austrian, Turkish and Jordanian brands.

At first I chalked it up to better jam-making overseas. Then — um, duh — I read the labels. All the good imported preserves were made with the morello variety of cherry, which explained the distinctive flavor we so liked — puckery and vivid, like idealized cherry candy. While morello cherries are largely unknown in the United States, the situation is fortunately changing.

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All cultivated European sour cherries belong to the species Prunus cerasus, but there are two distinct groupings. Morellos have dark red skin and blood-red flesh, while amarelles have a bright hue that can only be called "cherry red" and yellow flesh.

As it turns out, there is a kind of cherry Maginot line that runs through the Western world. The morello is the default cherry of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the Balkans, the fruit orchards of Turkey, the Caucasus and the Middle East. It is extensively cultivated in Central Europe, with the most famous orchards in the Black Forest of Germany and the hill country of northern Hungary. The farther east you go, the more the morello cherries are apt to be small, dark, astringent and harvested from the wild.

The amarelle cherry rules in Western Europe — in particular a cultivar called "montmorency," so named for a village in the Champagne region of France. In Auguste Escoffier's codification of French culinary terms, any dish prepared with cherries is termed "montmorency" much as "florentine" denotes spinach.

Yet France, of course, does manage to have it both ways. The regions of Auvergne and Burgundy are famous for their morello cherries, called "griottes" in French. In fact, one of Burgundy's most famous exports after wine is griottine (not to be confused with guillotine) — a conserve of morello cherries macerated in brandy. The English plant morello trees in their gardens.

Bringing up Balatons

Historical records show that early American settlers tried to plant morello cherry trees in upstate New York and Massachusetts. An archaeological survey of Williamsburg, Va., unearthed jars of European morello cherry conserve that colonists were saving for a treat.

But when American fruit growers began planting European sour cherries in earnest in Michigan and other states with a suitable climate, they turned to the high-yielding montmorency amarelle. What we call "pie cherries" are amarelles.

While the montmorency trees drip with their iconic red fruit in season, these soft yellow-fleshed cherries bruise and discolor easily once picked.

They cannot be sold in glass jars as are German and Hungarian morellos, so they are canned or frozen, generally with a healthy shot of red dye.

Further, many find the flavor of many amarelle cherries lacking. John Lehndorff, a food columnist at the Rocky Mountain News in Denver and former director of the American Pie Council, says, "A lot of the pie cherries are one note ... they're just kind of sour."

Morello cherries, on the other hand, seem both sweeter and more astringent, with a darker fruitiness Michigan State horticulturist Amy Iezzoni terms "plum flavors."

So captivated was Iezzoni with morello cherries and so eager to introduce them to the United States that she traveled to Hungary in 1983.

"At that time, it was behind the Iron Curtain," Iezzoni recalls with a laugh at her own audacity. "Commerce was impossible, and scientists just did not go over there."

Yet Hungary was famous for growing Europe's finest cherries. There, sweet and tart cherries had naturally crossed to produce the plumpest, juiciest and sweetest morellos on the continent.

Iezzoni worked out a profit-sharing agreement with the Communist government. It would grant her access, she would trademark a Hungarian morello cultivar in a partnership and enlist Michigan State to market it to farmers. At a cherry festival in northern Hungary, she found her blue-ribbon morello.

Back in the United States, Iezzoni christened this cherry the Balaton after a famous lake in Hungary.

Cherry growers at first experimented with a few trees here and there, gradually increasing their plantings once the Balatons began to get name recognition from good showings at fruit stands and farmers markets.

"The Balatons are the newest cherry in Michigan, but they're definitely getting big," says Patty Lanoue Stearns, author of the cookbook "Cherry Home Companion." Stearns — who lives in Traverse City, Mich., the self-proclaimed "cherry capital of the world" — says that growers increasingly plant Balatons as a hedge against bad weather. If rain or frost harms the montmorency crop, the later-ripening Balatons still have a shot.

Some estimates suggest up to 5 million pounds of Balaton cherries were grown last year: That's some serious strudel, but still a drop in the bucket of the 300 million pounds of tart cherries harvested.

All the same, there are enough Balaton morello cherries out there that Michigan fruit orchards offer a ready supply of individually quick frozen cherries to overnight anywhere in the country. That's how I came to find a 6-pound box of semi-frozen pitted cherries on my doorstep.

Adding to the enjoyment

Rather than offering a recipe, Iezzoni suggested a first step: gently simmering the cherries with a small amount of sugar (1 tablespoon per 2 cups) and a bare sprinkle of cornstarch to give the juice some body, but resist the temptation to add almond extract. ("If you want to make pie, then add more cornstarch," she added.)

It was wonderful advice. The sugar actually made the cherries seem more tart and vastly more interesting to eat. The sourness carries all the astringent, briery, plummy flavors, while the balancing hand of sugar puts them in focus.

For comparison's sake, I also ordered both German and Hungarian jarred morello cherries from a mail-order gourmet shop. Eaten side by side, I could taste the family similarities of all three cherries. Yet the Balatons were superior in every way, from their stunning Bing-cherry color to their hurts-so-good pucker to their winy intensity.

In recipes, the frozen Balatons also outperformed the jarred cherries, but both were leagues ahead of any other frozen or canned pie cherries I could find.

I'll eventually let you know about the homemade griottine, currently aging on the Scary Shelf in the fridge. In the meantime, I've been making so much cherry crisp and cherry strudel that my 6 pounds of Balatons finally ran out.

I now know why even the old, soggy strudel I ate on vacation in Austria and Hungary a few years ago was so tasty. It's all about the cherries.

Yet I'm surprised how few professional cooks have cottoned to these homegrown morello cherries.

A casual phone survey showed that many chefs — particularly European-born ones — would love to get their hands on a quality morello cherry. But then a Google search revealed how few restaurants nationwide mention either Balaton or morello cherries on the menu.

I don't think anyone realizes they're the same thing.