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Dessert

Peach Jam

A jam made by cooking peaches with sugar and water until thick.

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 ↓

Peach Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the peaches in 5 gallons of water until soft or pulpy.

  2. In a large pot, combine 5 gallons of the peach pulp, 60 pounds of sugar, and 3 gallons of water.

Make the jam

  1. Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the cooked peaches.

  2. Cook until the temperature reaches 221°F (105°C).

Jar and finish

  1. Process the jam in jars for 25 minutes at 180°F (82°C).

  2. Use any leftover peach particles and syrup from preserves in the jam.

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

Peaches
Provide the fruit flavor and the bulk of the jam.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the jam and, at high concentration, helps it set and keep.

The step that matters

Cook until the temperature reaches 221°F (105°C). Water boils off until sugar reaches a concentration high enough to gel the fruit. Boiling point rises as sugar concentrates, so the thermometer shows when the jam is ready. Stopping early gives a runny jam; cooking too long makes it stiff and sticky.

“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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