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Dessert

To Pickle Apples, Peaches or Pears

A method for pickling apples, peaches, or pears in a sugar and spice syrup.

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 ↓

To Pickle Apples, Peaches or Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the cinnamon and cloves in vinegar.

  2. Strain out the spices and add sugar to the vinegar.

Cook the fruit

  1. Use fairly ripe peaches.

  2. Cook the fruit in the syrup until tender enough to pierce with a straw, but do not let it lose its shape.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Fruit
Provides the main body, texture and fruity flavor of the pickle.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and thickens the syrup, which helps preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the fruit.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the syrup.
Cloves
Adds pungent, warm aroma to the syrup.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Cooking the fruit until tender but not falling apart. Heat softens the fruit's cell walls and pectin, so overcooking makes it mushy. Testing with a straw catches tenderness early. Acid and sugar in the syrup help the fruit hold its shape.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, clove, 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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