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Pickled Peaches or Pears

A pickled fruit preserve made by cooking peaches or pears with vinegar, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickled Peaches or Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine vinegar and sugar in a large pot to make a syrup.

  2. Skim the syrup, then add the spices.

Cook the fruit

  1. Cook slowly for about 45 minutes until the fruit begins to clear.

Choose the spice method

  1. For dark pickles, use ground spices tied in a bag.

  2. For light pickles, use whole spices.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Peach + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Peach + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Peaches or pears
The main fruit, which softens and becomes translucent as it cooks in the syrup.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps keep the fruit preserved.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps draw flavor into the fruit while preserving it.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until the fruit begins to clear. Gentle heat lets the sugar syrup penetrate the fruit and soften it evenly. Vigorous boiling can break down the soft flesh and cloud the syrup.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peach, vinegar, sugar, clove, cinnamon):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, vinegar, sugar, clove, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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