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Sweet Peach Pickle

Peaches are pickled in a sweet vinegar and sugar solution with allspice, cloves, and cinnamon.

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 spiced syrup

  1. Tie the allspice, cloves, and cinnamon in a bag.

  2. Scald the vinegar, sugar, and spice bag together.

Pickle the peaches

  1. Pour the mixture over the peaches.

  2. Repeat this process for three mornings.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Main fruit; it absorbs the sweet vinegar syrup and becomes tender and flavourful.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and, with the vinegar, helps preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the peaches.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the syrup as it steeps.
Whole cloves
Add strong, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.
Stick cinnamon
Adds sweet, woody aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture over the peaches. The syrup must be hot and fully dissolved with the sugar so it can penetrate the fruit. Repeating the pour over several days lets sugar and spice gradually soak in and firm up the peaches.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, allspice, clove, 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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