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Dessert

Preserved Peaches

Peaches preserved in sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Preserved Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Cut peaches in half, remove stones, and peel them neatly.

Make the syrup

  1. For each pound of sugar, combine it with ½ cup of water and stir until dissolved.

  2. Heat the syrup over medium heat until boiling.

Cook and preserve

  1. Add the peaches to the boiling syrup.

  2. Boil gently until they are clear and uniform in color, turning them carefully with a skimmer.

  3. Once clear, remove each peach half with a spoon and place them on flat dishes to cool.

  4. Boil the syrup until thick, then pour it into a large pitcher to cool and settle.

  5. Once the peaches are cold, place them in jars and pour the syrup over them, leaving any sediment behind or straining the syrup.

  6. Optionally, add some peach kernels while boiling for flavor.

  7. Let the jars sit open overnight, then cover.

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 + 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

Ripe peaches
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and clear during gentle simmering in syrup.
White sugar
Forms the thick syrup that preserves the peaches and gives them sweetness.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can form an even syrup before cooking.

The step that matters

Boil gently until clear. Gentle simmering lets sugar slowly penetrate the peach flesh, so it turns clear and holds its shape. Vigorous boiling can break the fruit apart and make the syrup cloudy.

“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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