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Uncooked Sweet Pickle Peaches

Peaches are preserved in a sweet vinegar syrup by repeated boiling and draining.

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

Uncooked Sweet Pickle Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Peel and halve the peaches.

  2. Place peaches in a crock, sprinkling cinnamon and cloves between layers.

Pickle

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

  2. Pour the boiling mixture over the peaches.

  3. Drain off the liquid the next morning.

  4. Boil the vinegar down by one-fourth and pour it over the peaches again.

  5. Repeat this process on the third morning.

Can

  1. Place peaches in cans and pour boiling vinegar over them, then 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Peach + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Peaches
Provide the fruit that is softened and flavoured by the syrup.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and, with the vinegar, forms the preserving syrup.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the peaches and gives the pickle its tang.
Whole cinnamon
Adds warm aroma that infuses into the peaches.
Whole cloves
Adds warm, pungent aroma that infuses into the peaches.

The step that matters

Boiling the vinegar down by one-fourth on each repeat. Reducing the syrup concentrates its sugar and acid, which helps preserve the peaches. Pouring it on boiling keeps the fruit hot and helps the syrup penetrate and seal the peaches.

Swap the peach

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

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

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