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Pickled Peaches

A sweet and sour preserve made by pickling peaches in a sugar and vinegar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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

  1. Rub peaches with a coarse towel and insert 2–3 whole cloves into each peach.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 4 pounds of sugar with 1 quart of vinegar to make a syrup, then skim the surface.

Scald and jar

  1. Drop a few peaches into the syrup at a time and scald until they can be pierced with a silver fork.

  2. Remove peaches and place them in glass jars, filling with syrup to overflowing.

  3. Seal jars tightly and store in a cool place.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

  4. Peach + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Peaches
Provide the fruit body, which softens during scalding and absorbs the spiced syrup.
Light brown sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit through its high sugar concentration.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the syrup its tang and helps preserve the fruit.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aromatic spice flavour to the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Scald until just pierceable. Scalding softens the peaches enough to take up syrup while keeping their shape. Overcooking turns them mushy and makes the fruit fall apart in the jar.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Peachthe original

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

More pickled peaches recipes

Sweet 47Spiced 3 See all 189 →

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