Name: To Make Peach Butter
Ingredients: 20 gallons pared peaches; 2 large buckets of water; 60 pounds white sugar

Why it works: Peach and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,308 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Make Peach Butter

Ingredients

20 gallons pared peaches
2 large buckets of water
60 pounds white sugar

Directions

Make the peach butter

In a large copper kettle, combine the peaches and water.
Boil until the peaches are soft and well dissolved.
Add the white sugar and stir until well mixed.

Cool and store

Allow to cool in crocks.
Grease writing paper, cut it to the shape of the crock, and tie it on top.
Check frequently to prevent molding.

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.

Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,308 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: Provide the fruit base that cooks down into a thick, spreadable butter.
White sugar: Adds sweetness and helps thicken the butter as water evaporates during cooking.

“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.