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Dessert

Spiced Peaches

Peaches preserved in sugar, vinegar, mace, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Spiced Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the vinegar.

Cook the peaches

  1. Add the peaches and the muslin bag with mace and cloves.

  2. Boil for 15 to 20 minutes until the peaches look clear.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  4. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Peach + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together348 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Form the fruit base, softening into tender flesh as they cook in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens and preserves the fruit by drawing out water and thickening the syrup.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the fruit.
Mace
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour that infuses the syrup.
Cloves
Contributes strong, aromatic spice flavour that infuses the syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling until the peaches look clear. Peaches turn translucent as sugar syrup penetrates the flesh. Boiling too long breaks the fruit down and makes it mushy, so check them at the low end of the time.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, sugar, 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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