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Iucho Pickles

A pickled fruit mixture of peaches, plums, cherries, pears, quinces, melons, cucumbers, and spices in a sugar-cinnamon-clove syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Iucho Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Soak cucumbers overnight in a mixture of vinegar and water.

  2. Parboil cucumbers in the same mixture the next day.

  3. Drain and dry the parboiled cucumbers.

Cook the fruit in syrup

  1. Make a syrup by boiling sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and cider vinegar together.

  2. Add enough fruit to cover the syrup.

  3. Boil gently until the fruit is tender.

  4. Remove the cooked fruit.

  5. Add more fruit as needed, being careful not to break sliced fruits.

  6. Prepare glass jars for storing the pickles.

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. Plum + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

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

  3. Peach + plumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

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

  4. Peach + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together114 recipes

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

  5. Cinnamon + peartop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the sweet syrup that preserves and flavours the fruit.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the pickles.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil gently until the fruit is tender. Boiling vigorously can break down soft fruit and split the flesh, while gentle simmering lets the fruit soften and absorb syrup while keeping its shape.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cinnamon, cider, vinegar, peach, plum, pear):

  1. Clovethe original
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Cardamomfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, cider, vinegar, peach, plum, pear. 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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