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Drink

Peach Cordial

A sweet alcoholic beverage made from peaches, brandy, water, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and brandy work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 339 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Peach Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Wipe the peaches to remove the down and cut them in several places to the stone.

  2. Place the peaches in a cask and fill it with peach brandy.

  3. Let it stand for six to eight weeks.

Make and clarify the cordial

  1. Draw off the liquid and add water until it is reduced to the strength of wine.

  2. For each gallon of this mixture, dissolve 1 pound of brown sugar.

  3. Pour the cordial into a cask just large enough to hold it.

  4. When perfectly clear, it is ready for use.

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. Peach + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together339 recipes

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

  2. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  3. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Ripe cling-stone peaches
Provide the fruit flavor and aroma that the cordial takes on as it steeps.
Peach brandy
Extracts flavor from the peaches and acts as the alcohol base that preserves the cordial.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavor to the finished cordial.

The step that matters

Letting the peaches stand for six to eight weeks. Flavor and color move from the fruit into the brandy slowly, and alcohol extracts aroma over time. Drawing off too early yields a weak, underdeveloped cordial.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, sugar. 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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