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Dessert

Dry Fruit Pickle

A preserved mixture of dried fruits steeped in vinegar and sugar, flavored with ginger, peppercorns, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and plum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Dry Fruit Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Wash and clean the dried fruits thoroughly and dry them in the sun.

  2. Stew the dried dates for 10 to 15 minutes.

  3. Cut the dates into rings.

  4. Remove the stones.

  5. Quarter the pippins.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by combining the vinegar and sugar.

Pack and store

  1. Arrange the quartered pippins with the other fruits in a wide-mouthed bottle or jar in alternate layers.

  2. Add the green ginger, peppercorns, sticks of cinnamon, and a little sprinkling of salt between the layers.

  3. Pour the vinegar syrup over the fruit until it is completely covered.

  4. Cork the bottle well.

  5. Expose the bottle to the sun for a few days.

  6. The pickle will be ready to eat in a month.

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. Apricot + plumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Plum + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Apricot + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  5. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried dates
Provide sweetness and a soft, chewy texture that softens further when stewed.
Sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar and adds sweetness to the syrup.
Vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid and gives the pickle its sour, tangy flavour.
Pippins
Add firm texture and tartness that holds its shape within the soft dried fruit.

The step that matters

Covering the fruit completely with syrup. Fruit left exposed above the liquid can spoil or mould, because the vinegar and sugar syrup is what keeps the pickle preserved. Pour until everything is submerged before corking.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apricot, plum, apple, sugar, vinegar, ginger, cinnamon):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, plum, apple, sugar, vinegar, ginger, 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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