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Sweet Carrot Pickles

A sweet pickle of carrots prepared with sugar, vinegar, and 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 Carrot Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Wash the carrots.

  2. Cook the carrots in boiling water until tender.

  3. Remove and peel the carrots.

  4. Cut the carrots into strips; if young and tender, leave them whole.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Prepare a syrup by boiling the sugar, vinegar, and spices for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the carrots to the syrup and cook until translucent.

Pack and seal

  1. Pack the carrots in jars and pour the syrup to overflow the jar.

  2. Adjust sterilized rings and covers, then fasten covers securely.

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. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together981 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Carrots
Form the main body of the pickle and absorb the sweet, spiced syrup as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharp taste of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that makes the pickle sour and helps preserve it.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the syrup.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Cook the carrots in the syrup until translucent. Cooking carrots in the hot syrup lets them absorb the sugar, vinegar and spices. Stopping too early leaves them opaque and less flavoured, while overcooking makes them soft and mushy.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Carrotthe original

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