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Dessert

Sweet Pickled Strawberries

A sweet pickled strawberry preserve made with sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, and cloves.

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 ↓

Sweet Pickled Strawberries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the calyx from the strawberries.

  2. In a stone jar, layer the strawberries with a sprinkle of cinnamon and cloves until all are used.

Make the syrup and soak

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

  2. Skim and pour the hot mixture over the fruit.

  3. Let the strawberries stand overnight.

  4. In the morning, drain off the syrup.

  5. Boil the syrup again and pour it over the berries.

Cook and jar

  1. The next morning, gently boil all together for 20 minutes.

  2. Pour into jars and cover.

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. 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

Strawberries
Provide the fruit that is preserved and becomes tender in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and thickens the syrup as it is boiled down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickling syrup its sharp, tangy flavour.

The step that matters

Gently boil all together for 20 minutes. Boiling hard can break down the strawberries into mush, while too short a boil leaves the syrup thin and the fruit less preserved. A gentle, steady simmer keeps the berries whole and lets the syrup thicken.

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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