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Sweet Peach Pickles

Sweet peaches preserved in a spiced vinegar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Peach Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the vinegar with the mace, cloves, sugar, and cinnamon.

  2. Add the peaches (peeled or unpeeled) and boil until tender.

  3. Transfer the peaches 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Peach + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Peaches
The fruit itself; boiling softens its flesh until tender enough to pack into jars.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the pickles their tang and helps preserve them.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cloves
Adds warm, pungent aroma to the pickling liquid.
Cinnamon
Adds sweet, warm aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Boiling the peaches until tender. Peaches soften quickly in hot liquid, and holding them at a boil too long makes the flesh break down and turn mushy. Pull them once they are just tender so they keep their shape in the jars.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

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