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Peaches, Pickled

Peaches pickled in a spiced syrup with salt water, cold water, and various spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Peaches, Pickled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Wash the peaches and soak them in salt water for 2 days.

  2. Soak the peaches in cold water for 4 to 5 hours.

  3. Wipe the peaches carefully to remove as much fuzz as possible without bruising them.

Spice and combine

  1. If stoned, stuff the peaches with mustard seed and a little pounded mace.

  2. Combine allspice, cloves, ginger, black mustard seed, horseradish, and sugar in a bowl.

  3. Mix the spices with the peaches.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Provide the fruit body and sweetness that the pickling liquid and spices flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharp spices in the pickle.
Black mustard seed
Adds a pungent, sharp flavour to the spice mix and stuffing.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent bite to the spice blend.

The step that matters

Wiping the peaches without bruising them. Peach skin is delicate and bruised flesh breaks down and can spoil or soften unevenly during pickling, so the fuzz must be removed gently.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, mustard, allspice, clove, ginger, horseradish, sugar. 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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