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Dessert

Spiced or Pickled Apples

A preserved apple dish made by boiling apples with sugar, spices, vinegar, and syrup, then jarred.

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 ↓

Spiced or Pickled Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and layer

  1. Pare the apples if using Pound Sweets; leave crab apples unpared.

  2. Layer the apples in a kettle with alternating layers of sugar.

  3. Add cinnamon and cloves, removing the heads.

Cook the apples and syrup

  1. Heat slowly to a boil with water.

  2. Add vinegar and spices, and boil until tender.

  3. Remove the fruit with a perforated skimmer and spread on dishes to cool.

  4. Boil the syrup until thick.

Pack and check

  1. Pack the apples in jars and pour the boiling hot syrup over them.

  2. Check the jars in a week; if fermenting, pour off the syrup, boil it, and pour it back over the fruit 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. 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. Sugar + vinegartop 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

Apples
Provide the fruit that softens while cooking but holds its shape when tender.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and thickens the syrup, helping preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Cinnamon bark
Adds warm aroma and flavor to the syrup and fruit.
Cloves
Adds pungent aroma and spice flavor to the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Pack with boiling hot syrup. Pouring boiling hot syrup over the fruit in jars heats the contents and helps drive out air, which supports a good seal and slows spoilage. If the jars start to ferment, reboiling the syrup and pouring it back hot is the step that restores that protection.

Swap the apple

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

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

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