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 Pickles
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the fruit until it can be pierced with a straw.
Place the fruit in canning jars.
Boil the vinegar, brown sugar, cloves, allspice, and cinnamon for a few minutes.
Pour the hot mixture over the fruit in the jars.
Seal the jars and set them aside to cool.
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.
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Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together14,189 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
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Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7,874 recipes
Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
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Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,536 recipes
Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
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Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,598 recipes
Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
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Clove + appletop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,774 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fruit
- Provides the bulk of the pickle and absorbs the sweet spiced syrup as it cooks and sits.
- Vinegar
- Adds the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the pickles.
- Brown sugar
- Adds sweetness and body to the syrup, and helps create the sweet pickle flavor.
- Whole cloves
- Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
The step that matters
Boil the fruit until it can be pierced with a straw. The fruit must be cooked enough to soften its firm flesh so it can take up the syrup, but not so long that it turns mushy and falls apart in the jars.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice, cinnamon, cucumber):
- Quincefits better
- Limefits better
- Cherryfits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice, cinnamon, cucumber. 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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