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Dessert

Apple Pickles, No. 1

A sweet and spicy pickled apple recipe using sugar, cider vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Apple Pickles, No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the apples

  1. Make a syrup by boiling sugar in vinegar.

  2. Drop in prepared apples and cook until tender.

Jar and seal

  1. Remove apples and place in glass jars in a hot water pan.

  2. Add a spice bag with cinnamon, cloves, and allspice to the syrup.

  3. Boil the syrup for 15 minutes longer, then fill jars and seal while hot.

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. Clove + allspicetop 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. Cider + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  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

Sugar
Forms the thick syrup and adds sweetness while helping preserve the apples.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps keep the pickled apples stable.
Apples
Provide the main body, which softens into tender pieces as they cook in the syrup.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma that is carried into the syrup through the spice bag.
Cloves
Add a strong, warm aroma that flavors the syrup through the spice bag.
Allspice
Adds a warm, aromatic flavor to the syrup through the spice bag.

The step that matters

Fill jars and seal while hot. Filling with hot syrup and fruit drives out air, and as the jars cool the contents contract and draw the lids down to form a seal.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Applethe original
  2. Quincefits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Pearfits less well

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