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Dessert

Peach Encho

A preserved peach mixture boiled with sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, and cloves until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Peach Encho

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spice syrup

  1. Place the cinnamon and cloves in a lace bag and tie it securely.

  2. Boil the spice bag in the vinegar until the mixture is sufficiently spiced, then remove the bag.

Cook and bottle

  1. Add the sliced peaches and sugar to the pot and boil until thick like marmalade.

  2. Bottle the mixture while hot.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 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).

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 and flavour that the preserve is built around.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it thickens with the fruit, helps it set.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and carries the spice flavour.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm aroma and flavour infused into the vinegar.
Cloves
Contributes strong aromatic spice flavour infused into the vinegar.

The step that matters

Boiling the peaches with sugar until thick. Sugar and fruit pectin set as water evaporates, so the mixture thickens to a marmalade-like consistency. Stopping too early leaves a runny preserve, while boiling too long can scorch the sugar and darken the flavour.

Swap the peach

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

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

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