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Peach Marmalade

A preserve made by cooking peaches with sugar and bitter almonds 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 almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 466 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Peach Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pare, stone, and quarter the peaches.

  2. Blanch the almonds in scalding water, then pound them until smooth.

  3. Scald the peaches in a little warm water and mash them.

Cook the marmalade

  1. Mix the mashed peaches with the sugar and almonds in a preserving kettle.

  2. Boil the mixture to a thick, smooth paste for about 15 minutes, stirring and skimming as needed.

  3. Keep the kettle covered as much as possible.

Jar

  1. Once cold, transfer the marmalade to glass jars.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe freestone peaches
Provide the main fruit body, pectin and flavor that set into the marmalade.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as it thickens, helps give it body and preserves it.
Bitter almonds
Add a distinct nutty, aromatic flavor that complements the sweet peaches.

The step that matters

Boiling to a thick paste. Boiling long enough drives off water and concentrates the sugar so the mixture thickens and sets when cold. Stirring prevents scorching on the bottom of the kettle, and keeping it covered reduces evaporation so the paste does not over-reduce unevenly.

“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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