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Dessert

Sweet Pickles

Sweet pickles are fruit preserved in vinegar, cloves, cinnamon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and steep

  1. Layer the peeled and sliced fruit in a jar with the whole cloves and cinnamon.

  2. Pour scalded vinegar and sugar over the fruit.

  3. Let it stand for 24 hours.

  4. Pour off the liquid, boil it for 5 minutes, then pour it over the fruit again.

  5. Let it stand for another 24 hours.

Cook and seal

  1. Boil the fruit and syrup together gently for 30 minutes.

  2. Seal 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. Quince + plumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together92 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + quincetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Cinnamon + quincetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Cinnamon + plumtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the fruit and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and balances the sharpness of the vinegar, adding to the syrup.
Sliced fruit
Forms the body of the pickle and soaks up the spiced vinegar syrup as it steeps.
Whole cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the vinegar as it infuses.
Cinnamon
Adds sweet, warm aroma and flavour to the vinegar as it infuses.

The step that matters

Boiling the fruit and syrup together. Boiling gently for the full 30 minutes softens the fruit so it becomes tender and absorbs the syrup. Too hard a boil can break the fruit apart and make the syrup cloudy.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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