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Dessert

Peach Marmalade

A fruit preserve made from peaches, sugar, spices, and peach juice, cooked to a thick consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Peach Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Tie the allspice, peach seed, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, and mace in a cheesecloth bag.

Cook

  1. In a large pot, combine peaches, sugar, peach juice, and the spice bag.

  2. Cook over medium heat until thick and clear, reaching 220°F (104°C).

Jar and seal

  1. Pack the hot marmalade into hot jars and seal immediately.

  2. For safety, process the jars to ensure sterilization and a tight 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Provide the bulk of the fruit, along with pectin and natural acid that help the marmalade thicken.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as it concentrates during cooking, helps it thicken and keep.
Peach seed
Adds a subtle almond-like aroma to the spiced fruit mixture.

The step that matters

Cooking to thickness. Cooking until the mixture reaches the stated temperature concentrates sugar and fruit solids so the marmalade sets when cool. Undercooking leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull in colour.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peach, sugar, allspice, ginger, clove, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, sugar, allspice, ginger, clove, cinnamon. 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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