Skip to main content
Dessert

Peach Conserve

A sweet preserve made from peaches, sugar, raisins, walnuts, and oranges, boiled until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Peach and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 385 recipes. Both carry pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Peach Conserve

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the peaches and oranges.

  2. Combine peaches, sugar, raisins, walnuts, and oranges in a pot.

  3. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

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 + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together385 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Walnut + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 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

Peaches
Provide the fruit base and bulk of the preserve, with natural pectin and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it dissolves and concentrates, helps it thicken and keep.
Seeded raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the preserve.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavor that contrasts with the soft fruit.
Oranges
Add acidity and citrus aroma that brighten the sweet fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens. Sugar and fruit must cook long enough for water to evaporate and the mixture to reach a thick, spreadable set. Stopping too early leaves a runny preserve, while overcooking can make it stiff or scorch on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, sugar, raisin, orange. 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.

More peach preserve recipes

Spiced 3 See all 15 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes