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Dessert

Sweet Pickled Peaches

A sweet pickled peach preserve made with sugar, cider vinegar, cloves, and cinnamon.

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 Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Select ripe, firm peaches free from blemishes.

  2. Peel the selected peaches carefully.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine 1 pound of sugar with 1 pint of cider vinegar.

  2. Place cloves and cinnamon in a bag.

  3. Boil the bag in the vinegar.

Cook and jar

  1. Drop in a few peaches at a time.

  2. Cook until they are tender but not soft.

  3. Remove the peaches with a skimmer.

  4. Place them in jars.

  5. Repeat the cooking process until all peaches are cooked.

  6. Fill the jars with the remaining vinegar.

  7. Seal the jars while warm.

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. Peach + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

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

  4. Peach + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Peaches
Provide the fruit that softens and absorbs the sweet, spiced vinegar flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the fruit in the syrup.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavour to the vinegar syrup.
Cinnamon
Adds sweet, woody aroma and warmth to the syrup.

The step that matters

Cook until tender but not soft. Peaches cook quickly in hot vinegar syrup. Overcooking breaks down their cell walls, so they turn mushy instead of holding their shape in the jar.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cider, vinegar, clove, 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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