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Pickled Peaches

A preserved peach dish made by boiling peaches in a sugar and vinegar syrup with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Pickled Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe off the fuzz from the peaches.

  2. Tie the spices in a bag and boil the bag with vinegar and sugar.

  3. Skim the mixture well.

Cook the peaches

  1. Add the peaches and cook for 10 minutes or until tender.

  2. Transfer the peaches to stone jars.

  3. Boil the syrup for 5 more minutes.

  4. Pour the syrup over the peaches.

  5. Pour off the syrup and boil it down again.

  6. Keep the bag of spices in the syrup.

  7. Repeat this process for 3 mornings.

  8. If the peaches are very ripe, simply pour hot syrup over them for 3 successive 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + cassiatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together116 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  5. Cassia + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together194 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
The main fruit; cooking in syrup softens the flesh while it keeps its shape.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the fruit.
Mixed whole spices
Release aroma and flavor into the syrup as it simmers.

The step that matters

Repeating the hot syrup over several mornings. Reboiling the syrup and pouring it hot over the peaches repeatedly lets the sugar and vinegar penetrate the fruit gradually. Skipping mornings or letting the syrup cool too much can leave the fruit under-preserved and less flavorful.

Swap the peach

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

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

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