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Pickled Apples, Pears and Grapes

A pickled fruit mixture of apples, pears, and grapes sweetened with sugar and flavored with mace, cinnamon, and cloves.

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 Apples, Pears and Grapes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickle

  1. In a large pot, combine the fruit, sugar, vinegar, mace, cinnamon, and cloves.

  2. Boil the fruit in the syrup until tender.

  3. Remove the fruit and set aside.

  4. Continue boiling the syrup until it thickens.

Pack and seal

  1. Pour the thickened syrup over the fruit and can it.

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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as it dissolves, thickens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the fruit.
Fruit
Forms the body of the pickle, softening as it simmers in the syrup.

The step that matters

Continue boiling the syrup until it thickens. Sugar syrup thickens as water evaporates and sugar concentration rises. If the syrup is too thin, the pickle may be watery and less well preserved, so it must be boiled until it visibly thickens before pouring over the fruit.

Swap the mace

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

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

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