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Apple Sweet Pickle

A pickled apple dish flavored with sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, cloves, and white mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Apple Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, cloves, and white mustard in a large pot and bring to a boil.

  2. While the mixture is boiling, peel and quarter the apples.

Cook and pour

  1. Place the apple quarters in boiling water and cook until tender.

  2. Once the apples are tender, pour the boiling vinegar and spice mixture over them.

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. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Cinnamon + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, with vinegar, forms the sweet-sour pickling syrup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the apples and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Apples
Form the body of the pickle; cooking softens them so they absorb the syrup.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm aromatic flavor to the syrup.
Cloves
Contributes warm, pungent aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Cook the apples until tender before pouring the syrup over them. Apples that are undercooked stay firm and resist absorbing the hot spiced syrup, so the flavor does not penetrate evenly.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Quincefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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