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Dessert

Pickled Peaches

A preserved peach dish made by boiling peaches with sugar, vinegar, mace, celery seeds, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Wash the peaches with a coarse cloth and prick them with a fork, then insert the cloves.

  2. Heat just enough water to cover the peaches until almost boiling.

  3. Remove the peaches from the water.

Make the syrup

  1. Add 5 pounds of sugar to the water.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes and skim the surface.

  3. Add 4 pints of vinegar along with the remaining spices in muslin bags.

  4. Boil this mixture for 10 minutes.

  5. Add the peaches and boil until they can be pierced with a straw.

  6. Remove the peaches from the mixture.

  7. Spread the peaches in dishes to cool.

  8. Boil the syrup down until thick.

Pack and serve

  1. Pack the peaches in glass jars and pour the hot syrup over them.

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. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Peach + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Celery + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 in the syrup and carries its flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its sharp, tangy flavour.
Whole cloves
Infuse warm, aromatic spice into the peaches.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the peaches until a straw pierces them. Peaches must be tender enough to pierce but still hold their shape. Overcooking causes them to fall apart, while undercooking leaves the flesh firm and less able to absorb the syrup.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, vinegar, sugar, celery, 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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