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Dessert

Peach Sauce

A sweet sauce made from peaches, sugar, citrus, and spirits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Peach Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large pot, combine the peaches and sugar.

  2. Cut the orange and lemon into very thin, small pieces and boil them in water to cover for 5 minutes, then drain.

Cook

  1. Add the boiled orange and lemon to the peaches and sugar, and cook until thick but not until the peaches are smooth.

  2. Remove from heat and let cool until half cold.

  3. Stir in the brandy, rum, and maraschino.

Jar

  1. Transfer to jars and seal.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Brandy + rumtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

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

  3. Peach + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together385 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Peach + rumtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together84 recipes

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

  5. Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Provide the main fruit body and flavor of the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, as it cooks down, thickens it into a spoonable texture.
Orange
Adds citrus aroma and a bright, slightly bitter note against the sweet peaches.
Lemon
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the fruit flavor.
Brandy
Adds aroma and warmth from spirit flavor, rounding out the fruit.

The step that matters

Cook until thick but not smooth. Sugar and fruit thicken as water evaporates and pectin sets on cooling, so stopping too late can make the sauce gluey and stopping too early leaves it runny. Keeping the peaches in pieces, rather than cooking them to a purée, preserves texture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peach, sugar, orange, brandy, rum):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, sugar, orange, brandy, rum. 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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