Skip to main content
Dessert

Peach Marmalade

A sweet and tangy peach preserve made with vinegar, baking powder, Worcestershire sauce, served hot with lettuce and bay rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Peach and rum work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 84 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Peach Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the peaches in vinegar until soft.

  2. Add baking powder and Worcestershire sauce to the peaches.

Cook and serve

  1. Bake over low heat until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Serve hot with lettuce and bay rum.

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 + rumtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together84 recipes

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

  2. Peach + lettucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Vinegar + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + rumtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Peach + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together348 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, sweetness and body of the marmalade.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the fruit.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, so it lightens the mixture.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury, tangy depth of flavour.

The step that matters

Bake over low heat until thoroughly cooked. Low heat cooks the peaches evenly through without scorching the sugars at the surface. Baking powder reacts with heat, so the mixture needs steady heat to rise and set rather than burn.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, vinegar, sauce, rum. 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.

You might also like

Peach Ice CreamPeach Ice Cream64 recipesPeach FrittersPeach Fritters55 recipesPeach MeringuePeach Meringue40 recipesPeach IcePeach Ice16 recipes