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Sweet Pickled Peaches

Peaches are pickled in a sugar and vinegar syrup with cloves and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 280 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Sweet Pickled Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the fuzz off the peaches with a coarse cloth and pare if desired.

  2. Stick three cloves into each peach.

Make the syrup and soak

  1. In a pot, combine 3 lbs of sugar and 1 pint of vinegar; boil.

  2. Pour the syrup over the peaches for four consecutive days.

  3. Add your choice of spices and allow them to boil with the syrup each time.

Finish and pack

  1. On the last day, cook the peaches until tender, then remove them with a perforated skimmer.

  2. Boil the syrup until thick, then pour it over the peaches while hot.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Peach + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together348 recipes

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

  5. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

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 softens and absorbs the sweet, sour syrup as the main body of the dish.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, when boiled into a thick syrup, helps preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve the fruit.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour that infuses the peaches.

The step that matters

Cook the peaches until tender, then boil the syrup until thick. Repeated syrup soaking draws sugar into the fruit and thickens the syrup. Cooking the peaches only until tender keeps them whole, while over-boiling breaks them down and makes the syrup too thin or too dense to coat well.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Peppermintfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, 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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