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Dessert

Pickled Apples

A sweet and sour apple preserve made with sugar, vinegar, cloves, cinnamon, and apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar, vinegar and cloves in a bag, and cinnamon in a pot.

  2. Cook the syrup for 5 minutes.

Cook the apples

  1. Add peeled and cored apples, quartered, until the surface is covered.

  2. Cook apples until transparent, then remove with a skimmer.

Pickle and serve

  1. Thicken the syrup and pour it over the apples.

  2. Let stand for a few days before serving.

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. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

Sugar
Sweetens the apples and, as it cooks into the syrup, helps preserve them and give them body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its sharp flavour and helps preserve the apples.
Apples
Form the main body of the pickle, softening as they cook and absorbing the spiced syrup.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Cook apples until transparent, then remove with a skimmer. Cooking until the apples turn translucent means the flesh is softened and has taken up syrup without falling apart. Removing them promptly, with a skimmer, stops them overcooking and turning mushy.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Quincefits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, 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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