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Dessert

Spiced Sweet Pickles

A preserved fruit mixture of cherries, peaches, and plums sweetened with sugar and spiced with whole allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and plum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 163 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Spiced Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Combine 4 quarts of cherries, 1 lb of sugar, and 1 quart of vinegar.

  2. Boil the whole allspice with the sugar and pour over the hot cherries.

Prepare the peaches

  1. Peel, stone, and halve 9 lbs of peaches.

  2. Boil the peaches in water until tender.

  3. Add the peaches to a mixture of 4 lbs of sugar, 1 pint of vinegar, and a little whole allspice.

  4. Cook for 1 hour or until done.

Prepare the plums

  1. Combine 4 quarts of plums, 1 pint of vinegar, and 1 lb of sugar.

  2. Boil the vinegar, spices, and sugar together.

  3. Add the plums and boil a little longer.

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. Peach + plumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Plum + allspicetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Peach + allspicetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Vinegar + plumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cherries
Provide the main fruit and body of the pickle.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the syrup as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tangy flavour and helps preserve it.
Peaches
Provide the main fruit, softening into tender pieces as they cook.
Plums
Provide the main fruit and tart flavour in the pickle.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Peppermintfits about as well
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, peach, plum. 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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