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Peaches in Brandy

Peaches are boiled, cooled, and then coated with a brandy-sugar syrup and jarred.

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 ↓

Peaches in Brandy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Choose slightly unripe peaches and wipe off the down with a cloth.

  2. Prick each peach with a small fork to the stone.

  3. Place the peaches in water and heat on moderate fire until nearly boiling.

  4. When softened, transfer peaches to cold water for 15 minutes.

  5. Change the water and let them sit for another 15 minutes.

  6. Drain the peaches on clean towels and let them dry.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil clarified sugar to a little pearl consistency, using ¼ syrup for ⅔ fruit.

  2. Add double the quantity of brandy to the syrup, mix, and strain through a flannel bag 2-3 times.

Pack and seal

  1. Arrange the peaches in a glass jar.

  2. Cover the peaches with the syrup and seal the jars with tied bladders.

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. 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

Peaches
Provide the fruit that softens in water and absorbs the syrup and brandy flavour.
Clarified sugar
Forms the syrup that sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it.
Brandy
Adds alcoholic aroma and flavour and helps preserve the fruit in the syrup.

The step that matters

Heating the peaches in water. Heating only until nearly boiling softens the fruit without breaking it down. Overcooking turns the peaches mushy, so they hold their shape poorly in the syrup.

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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