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Brandied Peaches

Peaches preserved in a sugar syrup and brandy.

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 ↓

Brandied Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by combining sugar and water in a pot. Bring to a boil and cook for 8 minutes.

  2. Boil the syrup until it thickens, then add the brandy.

Poach and jar the peaches

  1. Add the peeled peaches and cook for an additional 5 minutes.

  2. Remove the peaches and place them in sterilized jars.

  3. Pour the syrup into the jars over the peaches. Cover and 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. Peach + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together339 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy 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

Sugar
Forms the thick syrup that sweetens the peaches and helps preserve them.
Peaches
Provide the fruit that softens in the syrup and absorbs its flavour.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour and contributes to the preserving character of the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until it thickens before adding the brandy. Reducing the syrup concentrates its sugar so it thickens and preserves the fruit. Adding brandy to a boiling syrup would drive off much of its alcohol, so the brandy should be added once the syrup has thickened and been removed from the heat.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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