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Pickled Freestone Peaches

A pickled peach preserve made with sugar, vinegar, spices, and sealed in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Freestone Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peaches

  1. Cook the peaches in a pot until tender.

Make the syrup

  1. In a separate pot, combine sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, cloves, and mustard seed to create a syrup.

  2. Boil the syrup down by half.

Pack and seal

  1. Pour the syrup over the peaches and seal the jars.

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. Peach + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Cinnamon + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Peach + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and absorbs the spiced syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and spice flavor to the syrup.
Cloves
Adds pungent, warm aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup down by half. Reducing the syrup concentrates its sugar and vinegar, so it has enough body and acidity to flavor and help preserve the peaches. Too little reduction leaves a watery, weakly flavored pickle.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Quincefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Peachthe original

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