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Peach Sweet Pickle

A sweet pickle made by cooking peaches with sugar, vinegar, cloves, allspice, and cinnamon.

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

Peach Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the peaches that are nearly ripe.

  2. Weigh the peaches and place them in a porcelain kettle.

Cook

  1. Add half the weight of the peaches in sugar and ½ pint of vinegar for each pound.

  2. Add the cloves, allspice, and cinnamon.

  3. Cook until the syrup thickens slightly.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Peach + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Peach + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Provide the fruit that forms the body of the pickle and softens as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and helps thicken the syrup as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the pickle.

The step that matters

Cook until the syrup thickens slightly. Cooking drives off water and concentrates the sugar and vinegar, so the syrup thickens. Stopping too early leaves a thin liquid, while cooking too long can make the peaches break down and turn dark and tough.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Peachthe original

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