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Dessert

Peach Mangoes

Preserves of peaches stuffed with celery and mangoes soaked in a cider vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Peach Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Wash and cut the peaches in halves, removing the pits.

  2. Fill the peach halves with chopped celery and season with salt and white mustard seed. Press the halves together and tie them in a small square of cheesecloth.

Make the syrup and soak

  1. Make a syrup by boiling cider vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves.

  2. Pour the boiling syrup over the mangoes and let them stand overnight.

  3. The next morning, pour off the syrup, bring it to a boil, and repeat the process.

Cook and seal

  1. On the third morning, boil the mangoes in the syrup until they can be pierced with a straw.

  2. Pack the mangoes in jars, pour syrup over them, and seal tightly.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Form the body of the preserve, softening into tender, sweet fruit during the syrup soaks.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, in the thick syrup, helps preserve the fruit.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sharp, tangy flavour typical of sweet pickled preserves.
Celery
Adds crisp, savoury texture and a vegetal note inside the peach halves.

The step that matters

Repeating the syrup soak over three mornings. Pouring off and reboiling the syrup on each day draws sugar into the fruit gradually and softens it without breaking it down. Skipping or rushing the days can leave the peaches firm and under-flavoured.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, mustard, cider, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, clove. 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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