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Dessert

Sweet Pickles

A preserved plum or damson pickle made with vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Ensure the fruit is dry and whole.

  2. Layer the fruit with sugar and spices in pickle jars.

  3. Pour the vinegar over the fruit.

Cook the fruit

  1. Place the jars in a pan of cold water with straw at the bottom.

  2. Boil until the sugar dissolves and juice is extracted from the fruit.

  3. Let it stand in a cool place overnight.

Repeat and store

  1. Drain off the syrup, reboil it, and pour it over the fruit.

  2. Repeat this process for six or seven days, then let it stand for a week.

  3. Carefully transfer the plums to another jar, reboil the syrup, pour it over, and cover with a bladder.

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. Plum + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Plum + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together446 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Plum + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Plums or damsons
The main fruit; it softens and releases juice as it cooks in the syrup.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the pickle and draws juice out of the fruit, forming the syrup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the fruit.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup and fruit.
Cloves
Contributes strong aromatic spice flavour to the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Reboiling the syrup over several days. Repeatedly draining and reboiling the syrup thickens it and lets the fruit absorb sugar and spice gradually, while the vinegar keeps the pickle from spoiling. Boiling too hard or too briefly can leave the syrup thin or the fruit unevenly flavoured.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, cinnamon, sugar, 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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