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Dessert

Sweet Pickles

Sweet pickles are fruits or vegetables preserved in a sugar and vinegar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Mix sugar and vinegar in a pot to prepare the syrup.

  2. Bring the syrup to a boil.

Cook the fruit

  1. Add the prepared fruits or vegetables to the boiling syrup.

  2. Boil until tender, then transfer to jars and let cool.

Pickle and repeat

  1. Pour boiling syrup over the pickles.

  2. Let sit overnight.

  3. Drain.

  4. Boil the syrup.

  5. Repeat for 4 to 5 days before sealing.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the pickles and helps preserve them by drawing out moisture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the fruit or vegetables.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma to the syrup.
Cloves
Adds strong warm spice aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Repeating the syrup boil over several days. Reboiling and pouring the syrup over the fruit repeatedly draws sugar into the pieces and firms their texture. Sealing too early leaves the fruit under-infused and less stable in storage.

Swap the allspice

The recipe marks allspice as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, clove, mace, ginger, apple):

  1. Allspicethe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Cardamomfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

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