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Dessert

Sweet Pickles

A preserved fruit pickle made by boiling fruit in syrup and repeatedly skimming the syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare syrup as for peaches.

  2. Pare and cut fruit into halves or quarters, or leave small fruit whole.

Cook the fruit

  1. In a porcelain kettle, bring syrup to a boil.

  2. Add fruit and cook until a silver fork easily pierces them.

  3. Skim out fruit.

Pack and cover

  1. Place fruit in a jar.

  2. Pour boiling syrup over the fruit.

Repeat daily

  1. Repeat boiling the syrup daily.

  2. Skim the syrup daily.

  3. Pour the boiling syrup over the fruit until fully done.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Cinnamon + syruptop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together990 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Peach + syruptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Fruit
Main ingredient; cooking softens its flesh so it becomes tender and easy to pierce.
Syrup
Sweetens the fruit and surrounds it, carrying flavour and helping preserve it.
Whole cloves
Adds warm, pungent spice aroma that infuses the syrup and fruit.
Stick cinnamon
Adds sweet woody aroma that infuses the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Pouring boiling syrup over the fruit. The syrup must be boiling hot when poured so it heats the fruit through and drives out air, and repeated boiling and skimming keeps the syrup clear and hot between treatments.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, cinnamon, syrup. 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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