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Brandy Peaches

Peaches preserved in a sugar syrup, finished with brandy.

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

Why it works: Peach and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 303 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Brandy Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pour boiling lye over the peaches and rub off the dirt with a coarse cloth.

Make the syrup and cook the peaches

  1. Make a syrup by boiling sugar with water, using ½ pound of sugar for each pound of peaches.

  2. Boil and skim the syrup, then add the peaches and boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the peaches from the syrup and cool them on a dish.

Add brandy and jar

  1. Boil the syrup again until it reduces by half, then let it cool.

  2. Once cool, add an equal amount of brandy and stir well.

  3. Place the cooled peaches in a jar and pour the syrup over them.

  4. Seal the jar tightly.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + appletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 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 + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Fresh, ripe clingstone peaches
Provide the fruit that is cooked and preserved, supplying the main flavor and texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, once boiled, thickens the syrup that coats the peaches.
French, apple, or peach brandy
Adds aroma and a warm, fruity flavor to the finished syrup.

The step that matters

Let the syrup cool before adding the brandy. Alcohol evaporates quickly when heated, so adding brandy to hot syrup wastes much of its aroma and flavor. Waiting until the syrup is cool keeps the brandy's character in the finished peaches.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, sugar. 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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