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Dessert

Sweet Cherry Pickle

A sweet pickle made by boiling cherries with sugar, vinegar, cloves, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Cherry Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Stem and stone the cherries, then weigh them after pitting.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine sugar and vinegar and bring to a boil.

  2. Pour the boiling mixture over the cherries immediately.

  3. The next morning, pour off the syrup and simmer it gently for 1 hour.

Pickle and seal

  1. Add the cherries and spices to the syrup, then bring to a boil.

  2. Transfer the mixture into jars and seal.

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. 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 + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Cherries
Provide the fruit body and flesh that softens and absorbs the sweet-sour syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and, at this high ratio, helps preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its sour bite and helps preserve it.
Whole cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet aromatic flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling syrup over the cherries immediately. Boiling syrup poured straight onto the fruit begins softening and sealing its surface and draws out juice; delay lets the fruit cool and absorb less syrup, weakening the pickle's texture and preservation.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Allspicefits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

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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