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Sweet Pickled Peaches

Peaches pickled in a sweet vinegar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vinegar 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 ↓

Sweet Pickled Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the peaches in sugar the night before.

Cook and pickle

  1. Cook the peaches until they can be pierced easily with a straw.

  2. Remove the peaches and cook the syrup for about 30 minutes, or until it thickens.

  3. Pour the syrup over the peaches.

  4. Do not seal the jar until the peaches are completely cool.

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

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

  2. Peach + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together348 recipes

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

  3. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

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 softens during cooking and takes on the sweet-sour syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and thickens the syrup as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Cook the syrup until it thickens. Sugar and vinegar must reduce to a syrup of the right thickness; too thin a syrup makes the peaches watery and less well preserved, while overcooking makes it too stiff.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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