Skip to main content
Dessert

Pickled Fruit

A sweet and spicy fruit preserved in a vinegar-sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Measure the vinegar and add 1 pint of lukewarm water and the sugar.

  2. Tie the cinnamon and cloves in small bags and drop them into the mixture.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Cook and jar the fruit

  1. Add the prepared fruit and cook until tender.

  2. Drain the fruit and place it into jars.

  3. Boil the remaining juice until it thickens into a syrup, then pour it over the fruit.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Apple + clovetop 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. Vinegar + sugartop 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
Adds sweetness and, with the vinegar, helps build the thick syrup that coats the fruit.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the pickled fruit its tangy flavor and helps preserve it.
Fruit
Forms the body of the dish, softening as it cooks in the spiced syrup.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the syrup and the fruit.
Cloves
Adds a pungent, warm aroma that flavors the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the remaining juice until it thickens into a syrup. Sugar concentrates as liquid evaporates, so the syrup thickens only with sufficient boiling. Too little reduction leaves a thin liquid that does not coat the fruit well.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

More pickled fruit recipes

Sweet 4

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes