Skip to main content
Dessert

Sweet-pickle Peaches

Peaches are boiled in a sweet vinegar solution with cloves and cinnamon, then jarred with the hot liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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-pickle Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

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

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Cook the peaches

  1. While the mixture is boiling, peel the peaches.

  2. Drop the peeled peaches into the pot.

  3. Boil the peaches until they are soft enough to pierce with a straw.

  4. Remove the peaches from the pot and place them in a jar.

  5. Continue boiling the vinegar mixture for an additional hour.

  6. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the peaches in the jar.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 during boiling and carries the sweet-sour flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, in quantity, helps preserve the fruit and syrup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the pickled fruit.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet aroma and flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the peaches until soft enough to pierce with a straw. Peaches must be cooked just enough to become tender and absorb the syrup without falling apart. Undercooked fruit stays firm and resists flavour, while overcooked fruit turns mushy and loses its shape.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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.

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesPeach Ice CreamPeach Ice Cream64 recipesPeach FrittersPeach Fritters55 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipes