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Syrup for Sweet Pickles

A syrup made from sugar and vinegar, used to preserve sweet pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,297 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Syrup for Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine 3 pints of sugar with 1 pint of vinegar in a pot.

  2. Stir until the sugar is fully dissolved.

Bottle

  1. Pour the syrup into clean bottles.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of olive oil to each bottle before sealing to prevent mold.

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. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + olivetop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and olive barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,483 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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and the thick body of the syrup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity and a sharp, tangy flavour that balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Stir until the sugar is fully dissolved. Undissolved sugar crystals can remain in the syrup and later recrystallize or settle, leaving a grainy texture. Dissolving the sugar completely gives a smooth, evenly sweet syrup throughout.

“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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