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Dessert

Pickled Sweet Apples

A pickled sweet apple preserve made with vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 cinnamon and cloves to the syrup.

Cook and jar the apples

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

  2. Drop the apple pieces into the syrup and cook until tender.

  3. Transfer the apples to a jar and pour the syrup over them.

  4. 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

Sugar
Dissolves into the vinegar to form a sweet syrup that balances the sharpness of the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the pickling liquid its tang and helps preserve the apples.
Sweet apples
Form the main body of the dish, softening in the syrup until tender while absorbing its flavour.
Whole cinnamon
Infuses the syrup with warm, aromatic spice flavour.
Whole cloves
Add a pungent, warm aroma to the syrup that deepens the spiced flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking the apples until tender in the syrup. Cooking too briefly leaves the apples firm and under-flavoured, while overcooking makes them mushy. The hot syrup must penetrate the fruit so it absorbs flavour and softens evenly.

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.

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