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Pickling Pears and Peaches

This recipe preserves peaches and pears in a spiced vinegar and sugar solution.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Pickling Pears and Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Stick cloves into the peaches and pears, heads up and about ½ inch apart.

Make the pickle

  1. Boil together 7 pounds of sugar and 1 gallon of vinegar with 1 ounce of mace and 1 ounce of allspice.

  2. Add the fruit to the boiling mixture and cook gently until a pin slips in and out easily.

  3. Remove the fruit to jars.

  4. Boil the spiced vinegar for a few more minutes.

  5. Pour the hot vinegar over the fruit.

  6. Let the mixture cool.

Seal the jars

  1. Once cool, cover the jars with thick paper secured with paste or mucilage.

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. Peach + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together114 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pear + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and, with the vinegar, helps preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the fruit.
Peaches
Form the main body of the preserve and absorb the spiced syrup.
Pears
Form the main body of the preserve and absorb the spiced syrup.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavor that infuses into the fruit.

The step that matters

Cook the fruit gently until a pin slips in and out easily. Cooking gently lets the syrup penetrate and soften the fruit evenly. Boiling hard can break the fruit apart and toughen the skins, so the pin test shows when the flesh is tender throughout.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, pear, clove, sugar, vinegar, 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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