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Dessert

Pickled Peaches

Pickled peaches are preserved in a brine of water, salt, vinegar, mace, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Pickled Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Brush the peaches with a soft brush.

  2. Boil the water and salt together until clear, then cool.

  3. Submerge the peaches in the cold brine for 48 hours.

  4. Rinse the peaches in clean water and dry them on a soft towel.

  5. Insert 6 cloves into each peach.

Pickle and seal

  1. Boil enough vinegar to cover the peaches, adding 4 blades of mace and ¼ ounce of stick cinnamon for each quart.

  2. After boiling the vinegar for 15 minutes, add the peaches.

  3. Remove the kettle from heat and let the peaches sit in the hot vinegar for 5 minutes.

  4. Transfer the peaches and vinegar into glass jars and seal them airtight.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 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
Main fruit; the brine and hot vinegar soften and flavour the flesh while it keeps its shape.
Coarse sea salt
Brine draws moisture out of and seasons the peaches, firming them before pickling.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the peaches and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy flavour.
Stick cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the pickling vinegar.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickling vinegar.
Cloves
Adds pungent, warm aroma that penetrates the fruit from inside.

The step that matters

Submerging the peaches in the cold brine for 48 hours. The brine must fully cover the fruit for the whole soak. Any peach left exposed can spoil or darken, and the salt draws water out so the fruit firms before pickling.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, vinegar, cinnamon, clove. 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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