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Pickled Peaks

Pickled pears are preserved in a spiced vinegar solution.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Pickled Peaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Peel the pears and steam them until you can pierce them easily with a fork.

Pickle

  1. Place the pears in a jar and pour the boiling hot spiced vinegar over them.

  2. After two days, pour off the vinegar.

  3. Heat the vinegar until boiling. Return the boiling vinegar to the pears.

  4. Repeat this process after another two days.

  5. Store in a cool, dark place.

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. Pear + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Winter nelis pears
Provide the fruit that softens during steaming and absorbs the spiced vinegar.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Acidity preserves the pears and gives the pickle its tang.

The step that matters

Steaming the pears until just pierceable. Steaming softens the fruit enough for the vinegar to penetrate, but overcooking turns the pears mushy and they lose their shape in the jar.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Quincefits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cider, 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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