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Dessert

Apple Sweet Pickle

A sweet pickle made from apples, sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, cloves, and white mustard.

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 Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spiced vinegar

  1. Combine sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, cloves, and white mustard in a large pot.

  2. Boil the mixture together.

Cook and pickle the apples

  1. Peel and quarter the apples.

  2. Place the apples in boiling water and cook until tender.

  3. Pour the boiling vinegar and spice mixture over the tender apples.

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. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Cinnamon + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Form the bulk of the pickle and soften into a tender, absorbent fruit.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the fruit.
Stick cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet aroma to the spiced syrup.
Cloves
Adds strong, warm aroma and a pungent spice note.
White mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor that rounds out the spice blend.

The step that matters

Cook the apples until tender. Undercooked apples stay firm and absorb the spiced vinegar poorly, while overcooked apples turn mushy and lose their shape in the pickle. Stop as soon as they are tender when pierced.

Swap the apple

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

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

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