Skip to main content
Dessert

Pickled Sweet Apples

Pickled sweet apples preserved in a vinegar and sugar syrup with 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

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by combining vinegar and sugar in a pot.

  2. Add a few small pieces of whole cinnamon and a few cloves.

Cook the apples

  1. Pare, core, and quarter the sweet apples.

  2. Drop the apples into the syrup.

  3. Cook until tender.

Jar and cool

  1. Transfer the apples to a jar.

  2. Pour the syrup over them.

  3. Let cool; they are ready to eat and can be sealed for long-term storage.

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. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon 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

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and preserves the apples.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the apples by drawing out moisture.
Sweet apples
The fruit being pickled; they soften in the syrup and take on its flavor.
Whole cinnamon sticks
Adds warm aroma to the syrup and the apples.
Whole cloves
Adds warm, spicy aroma to the syrup and the apples.

The step that matters

Cook until tender. Apples cooked too briefly stay firm and may not absorb the syrup well, while overcooking makes them mushy. Cooking in the acidic syrup softens the fruit gradually, so checking for tenderness during cooking matters.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

You might also like

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