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Dessert

Peach, Pear, Quince and Apple Pickle

A pickled mixture of peaches, pears, quince, and apples sweetened with sugar and flavored with cinnamon and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Peach, Pear, Quince and Apple Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve sugar in vinegar in a pot.

  2. Add a small quantity of fruit and boil until tender enough to stick a straw through.

  3. Season with cinnamon and mace.

  4. Reheat the vinegar and pour it over the fruit for nine mornings.

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. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Vinegar + cinnamontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Vinegar + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,415 recipes

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fruit
Provides the body and flavor of the pickle, softening when boiled in the spiced vinegar.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness to the pickle.
Vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid and gives the pickle its sharp, acidic character.

The step that matters

Boiling the fruit until tender. Fruit boiled too briefly stays firm and will not absorb the spiced vinegar well, while overboiling turns it mushy. Testing with a straw shows when the flesh has softened enough to take up the syrup evenly.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, 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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