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Pickled Apples

A method of preserving apples by boiling them in a sugar and vinegar syrup with spices and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Pickled Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare the apples and boil them until tender in a syrup made of 4 pounds of sugar and 1 quart of vinegar.

  2. Remove the apples from the syrup.

Make the spiced syrup

  1. Boil the 3 large lemons until tender.

  2. Slice the boiled lemons.

  3. Make a new syrup with 5 pounds of sugar, 1 quart of vinegar, ½ ounce of mixed spices, and the sliced lemons.

  4. Boil this syrup for half an hour.

  5. Pour the hot syrup over the fruit.

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. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  3. Apple + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,884 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Sweet apples
Form the main body of the pickle, softening as they simmer in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and, with the vinegar, helps preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the fruit.
Lemons
Add acidic citrus flavour and aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the apples until tender in the syrup. Apples must be cooked through so they take up the syrup, but over-boiling can make them mushy and break them apart. Testing for tenderness with a fork helps keep them whole.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, vinegar. 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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