Name: Canned Peaches or Pears
Ingredients: 10 to 12 quarts of peaches or pears; 1 to 2 pounds of sugar

Why it works: Peach and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,308 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Canned Peaches or Pears

Ingredients

10 to 12 quarts of peaches or pears
1 to 2 pounds of sugar

Directions

Prepare

Halve and core the peaches or pears.
Sweeten the fruit with 1 to 2 pounds of sugar and let it stand until the sugar dissolves; do not add water.

Cook and can

Place the fruit in a porcelain kettle on the stove and heat it until it reaches a boiling point to expel the air.
Follow the directions for canning in 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.

Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar: Sweetens the fruit and draws out juice as it stands, helping it hold together.
Peaches or pears: Main fruit that gives the preserve its flavor and texture.

“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.