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Dessert

Sweet Pickle

A preserved fruit pickle made by boiling fruit, sugar, vinegar, ginger, horseradish, cloves, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Place the fruit in a stone jar.

  2. Set the jar in a boiler of cold water.

  3. Boil until the juice is well extracted.

  4. Remove the fruit.

  5. Pour the juice into a kettle.

Make the syrup

  1. Add ½ pound of sugar for each pound of fruit.

  2. Skim the mixture well.

  3. Drop the fruit back into the kettle.

  4. Skim again.

  5. Let the mixture boil.

  6. Remove from heat.

  7. Boil the juice for three mornings.

  8. Pour the boiled juice over the fruit.

Flavour and finish

  1. Add 1 pint of vinegar for each quart of juice.

  2. Add pounded ginger.

  3. Add grated horseradish in muslin bags.

  4. Add cloves to taste.

  5. Add allspice to taste.

  6. Add bits of broken race ginger.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Horseradish + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Horseradish + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Fruit
Provides the main body and flavour of the pickle.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the pickle.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the pickle.
Ginger
Adds warm, pungent aroma and a spicy bite.

The step that matters

Skimming the mixture well. Skimming removes foam and impurities that rise as the sugar dissolves and the juice boils, keeping the pickle clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, ginger, 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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