Skip to main content
Dessert

Pickled Sweet Apples

A preserved apple dish made with vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves.

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

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 Sweet Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Steam the apples until a straw can pierce them.

Make the syrup and pickle

  1. In a pot, combine boiling vinegar, sugar, and spices.

  2. Add the steamed apples and simmer for 2 minutes.

  3. Put the mixture into jars 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 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).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Apples
Provide the main body and texture of the pickled fruit.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the apples in the syrup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the fruit.
Stick cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Steam the apples until a straw can pierce them. Steaming softens the apples enough to absorb the syrup, but overcooking makes them mushy. A straw test shows when they are tender yet still hold their shape.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Quincefits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes