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Sweet Peach Pickle

A pickled peach preserve made with vinegar, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, mace, and peaches.

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 ↓

Sweet Peach Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the vinegar, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, and mace for 10 minutes.

Cook and jar the peaches

  1. Add the peaches and cook until tender.

  2. Remove the peaches and place them in jars.

  3. Boil the syrup until thick and pour it over the peaches.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + peachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Clove + peachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 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
Form the main body of the pickle and soften into a tender, syrup-soaked texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and thickens the syrup as it boils down.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Cloves
Contribute a warm, pungent aroma to the syrup.
Cinnamon
Adds a sweet, warm aroma that rounds out the spiced syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thick. As water evaporates, the sugar concentrates and the syrup thickens. Stopping too early leaves a thin syrup that does not coat the peaches well and can make the pickle watery.

Swap the mace

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

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

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