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Peach or Apple Pickles

Pickled peaches or apples in a sweet vinegar syrup with cloves, cinnamon, and ginger.

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 ↓

Peach or Apple Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine vinegar and sugar in a pot, boil slowly for 5 minutes, and skim off any foam.

Cook the fruit

  1. Pare the fruit and add it to the syrup along with the spices.

  2. Simmer the fruit until tender.

Jar and seal

  1. Fill jars with the fruit and set them in a warm place.

  2. Boil the syrup until thick, then fill the jars and seal them.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + peachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and, at high concentration, helps preserve the fruit and thicken the syrup.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the fruit.
Peaches or apples
Provide the fruit that softens in the syrup and absorbs its flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thick. Reducing the syrup concentrates sugar and acid, which helps preserve the fruit in sealed jars. Stopping too early leaves a thin syrup that spoils more easily.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Peachthe original

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