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Superior Pickled Apples

A preserved apple dish made by boiling apples in sugar and vinegar syrup, then canning them.

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

Superior Pickled Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare the apples.

  2. Boil the apples in a syrup made of 4 pounds of sugar and 1 quart of cider vinegar until tender.

  3. Remove the apples from the syrup.

Make the spiced syrup

  1. Prepare a new syrup with 5 pounds of sugar and 1 quart of vinegar.

  2. Add 2 teaspoons each of cloves and cinnamon tied in a bag to the new syrup.

  3. Boil the new syrup for 15 to 20 minutes.

Pack and seal

  1. Pour the hot syrup over the apples.

  2. Can the apples and seal.

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. Apple + cidertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet apples
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and absorbs the sweet-sour syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the apples by drawing out moisture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickling syrup its tang and helps preserve the fruit.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet aromatic flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the apples until tender, not mushy. Apples must be cooked enough to soften and take up syrup, but overcooking breaks down their cell structure so they turn mushy. Removing them promptly keeps their shape while the syrup is still hot.

“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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