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Dessert

Sweet Pickles

Sweet pickles are pears preserved in a sweet vinegar syrup with spices.

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 ↓

Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the pears

  1. In a large pot, combine the pears, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, and vinegar.

  2. Boil until the pears are tender.

Clove and finish

  1. Remove the pears and insert 4 or 5 cloves into each one.

  2. Continue boiling the syrup for 30 minutes.

  3. Pour the syrup over the pears.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pear + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  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

Pears
The fruit that softens during cooking and absorbs the flavour of the syrup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, once boiled, thickens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the fruit.
Whole cinnamon
Infuses the syrup with warm, aromatic spice flavour.
Allspice
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Stop boiling the pears once they are tender. Pears cooked past tender lose their shape and turn mushy. Removing them at tenderness keeps them firm while the syrup continues to boil and concentrate.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Quincefits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

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