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Peach Pickles

Peach Pickles are preserved peaches boiled in a sugar, vinegar, and water syrup with 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 ↓

Peach Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Boil the peaches in water for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain and cool the peaches on platters or a sieve.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by boiling 7 pounds of sugar, 3 pints of vinegar, and 1 pint of water; skim the syrup.

Cook and jar

  1. Drop enough peaches into the syrup for one or two jars at a time and boil for 5 minutes.

  2. Place the peaches in jars with cinnamon and cloves.

  3. After all peaches are boiled, boil the syrup until thick, pour it over the peaches, and seal the jars.

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. 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. 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

Peaches
Provide the fruit that softens and absorbs the sweet-sour syrup as the pickle.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, when boiled down, thickens it and helps preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the pickled peaches.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thick before pouring it over the peaches. Sugar concentrates as the syrup boils down, which thickens it and helps preserve the fruit. A syrup that is too thin may not keep the peaches well.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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