Skip to main content
Drink

Pickle for Pears or Peaches

This is a pickled pear or peach recipe using vinegar, sugar, salt, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vinegar and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Pickle for Pears or Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil vinegar, sugar, salt, and spices together.

  2. Stem the fruit and clean the skins with a coarse cloth.

Cook and pack

  1. Cook the fruit until soft, a few pieces at a time.

  2. Put the fruit in sealers or a crock and pour the liquid over them.

  3. Keep tightly covered.

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. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Pear + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the fruit and balances its sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the fruit in the syrup.
Pears or peaches
Supply the fruit that softens during cooking and absorbs the spiced syrup.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes