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Dessert

Pickling Pears and Peaches

A pickled fruit preserve made with peaches, pears, cloves, sugar, vinegar, mace, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickling Pears and Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Stick whole cloves into the peaches and pears, heads up and about ½ inch apart.

Make the pickling syrup

  1. Boil together 7 pounds of sugar and 1 gallon of vinegar with 1 ounce of mace and 1 ounce of allspice.

  2. Once boiling, add the fruit and let it boil gently until a pin slips in and out easily.

  3. Remove the fruit and place it in jars.

  4. Boil the spiced vinegar for a few more minutes, then pour it over the fruit.

Seal and store

  1. Allow to cool, then cover the jars with thick paper secured with paste or mucilage.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Peach + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together114 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pear + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and, at this quantity, helps preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the fruit.
Pears
Main fruit; softens during gentle boiling in the spiced syrup and absorbs its flavour.
Peaches
Main fruit; softens during gentle boiling in the spiced syrup and absorbs its flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling the fruit gently until a pin slips in and out easily. Boiling hard can break up soft peaches and pears, while stopping too early leaves the flesh firm and under-penetrated by the syrup. Gentle heat lets the fruit soften evenly so it takes up sugar and spice without falling apart.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, pear, clove, sugar, vinegar, allspice. 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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