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Dessert

Peach Butter

A preserve made by cooking peaches with sugar and cider.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and cider work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 90 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Peach Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and halve the peaches.

Cook the butter

  1. Put the peaches in a large kettle and stir constantly to prevent sticking until smooth and thick.

  2. Add the kernels at the beginning and remove them before finishing.

  3. When nearly done, add the sugar.

Jar

  1. Put the mixture in jars and cover tightly or 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 + cidertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together90 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  3. Sugar + cidertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Form the bulk of the butter, breaking down into a smooth, thick purée as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the butter as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Stirring constantly in the kettle. Peach purée is thick and sugar-rich, so it scorches easily on the bottom of the pot. Constant stirring prevents sticking and burning, which would give a bitter, dark flavour.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cider. 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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