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Dessert

Pickled Strawberries

A pickled strawberry preserve made with cider 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 ↓

Pickled Strawberries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place strawberries in the bottom of a jar.

  2. Add a layer of cinnamon and cloves, then more strawberries, repeating the layers.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine cider vinegar and sugar in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for about 5 minutes.

  3. Pour the syrup over the strawberries.

  4. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours.

  5. Pour off the syrup.

  6. Boil the syrup again.

  7. Pour the syrup over the strawberries.

  8. Let the mixture stand as before.

Cook and jar

  1. Boil the strawberries and syrup slowly for 25 minutes.

  2. Put the mixture in jars.

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

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

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 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

Strawberries
Form the fruit base that softens and takes on the syrup and spices.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickling syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the pickle its sharp flavor and helps preserve it.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aromatic flavor that infuses into the fruit.
Cloves
Adds strong aromatic spice flavor that infuses into the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the strawberries and syrup slowly for 25 minutes. Gentle simmering lets the syrup thicken and penetrate the fruit without breaking it down into mush. Boiling too hard can collapse the berries and make the texture uneven.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Allspicefits about as well
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Cardamomfits less well

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