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Sweet Pickled Allspiced Fruits

A preserved fruit mixture sweetened with brown sugar and spiced with cloves and cinnamon, then sealed in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Sweet Pickled Allspiced Fruits

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the fruit

  1. Combine the prepared fruit, light brown sugar, vinegar, cloves, and cinnamon in a pot.

  2. Boil until the fruit is tender.

  3. Reduce the juice to a syrup consistency.

Pack and seal

  1. Pour the syrup over the fruit and seal the jars.

  2. For plums, cherries, peaches, and berries, place them in jars without cooking.

  3. Pour the boiling hot syrup over the fruit, let it sit, then boil the syrup for 3 consecutive mornings before sealing.

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. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + cinnamontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

Prepared fruit
Forms the bulk of the preserve and softens into tender pieces when boiled.
Light brown sugar
Sweetens the fruit and thickens the juice into a syrup that helps preserve it.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the fruit.
Cloves
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Cinnamon
Contributes a sweet, warm aroma and flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup over three mornings. The syrup must be brought back to a full boil each time it is reheated. Repeated heating keeps the sugar and vinegar mixture hot and stable before the jars are sealed.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, 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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