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Dessert

Pickled Peaches

A sweet and sour preserve made by boiling peaches with sugar, vinegar, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 280 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickled Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare and cook

  1. Wash and peel the peaches.

  2. In a large pot, combine sugar and vinegar, and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the peaches and cloves, and simmer until the peaches are tender.

Pack and process

  1. Pack the peaches into sterilized jars and pour the syrup over them.

  2. Seal the jars and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Peach + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together348 recipes

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

  5. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

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 simmering and absorbs the syrup's flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that flavors the syrup and helps preserve the peaches.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice to the syrup.

The step that matters

Process the sealed jars in a boiling water bath. Heating the sealed jars in boiling water destroys microorganisms that could spoil the peaches and forms a vacuum seal. Skipping or shortening this step leaves the jars unsafe to store at room temperature.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Peppermintfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, sugar, vinegar. 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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