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Dessert

Sweet Pickle

A preserved fruit mixture sweetened with sugar and vinegar, spiced and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and plum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 245 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fruit

  1. Combine the fruit, vinegar, water, and sugar in a large pot.

  2. Cook until the fruit is soft.

  3. Remove the fruit and set aside.

Spice and pack

  1. Add the mixed spices to the liquid and boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the hot liquid over the fruit.

  3. Place the fruit in small jars and cover.

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. Pear + plumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Peach + plumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Peach + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together114 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Plum + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together222 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and helps preserve the fruit by drawing out moisture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the pickles.
Mixed fruit
Forms the body of the pickles and absorbs the syrup as it cooks.
Whole mixed spices
Provide aroma and warm flavor to the spiced syrup.

The step that matters

Cook until the fruit is soft. Cooking the fruit until tender lets it absorb the sugar and vinegar syrup evenly. Undercooked fruit stays firm and will not take up the flavor well, and it may not keep as well in the jars.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberthe original
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Lettucefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, pear, plum, vinegar, 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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