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Strawberry Pickles

A sweet and spicy preserve made by pickling strawberries with vinegar, sugar, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,431 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Strawberry Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Pickle the berries

  1. Layer cloves and strawberries in a jar.

  2. Boil cider vinegar and sugar for 5 minutes to make a syrup.

  3. Pour the syrup over the berries and let it stand for 24 hours.

  4. Pour off the syrup, boil it again, and pour it over the berries.

Cook and jar

  1. Let it stand as before, then boil the berries and syrup slowly for 25 minutes.

  2. Put the mixture in jars and cover.

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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Cider + clovetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,683 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Coffee + clovetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together573 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-isoeugenol (clove, spicy).

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

What each ingredient does

Strawberries
The main fruit; it softens and absorbs the sweet-sour syrup as it stands.
Cider vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the fruit.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and balances the vinegar's sharpness.
Cloves
Adds a warm, spicy aroma to the syrup and berries.

The step that matters

Simmering the berries and syrup slowly for 25 minutes. A hard boil can break the strawberries apart, while a gentle simmer lets the sugar syrup thicken and penetrate the fruit gradually, keeping the berries whole.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Peppermintfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, cider, vinegar, sugar. 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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