Name: Preserved Peaches
Ingredients: 1.5 pounds sugar; 1 pint water; large fruits (peaches)

Why it works: Sugar and peach 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 ↓

Preserved Peaches

Ingredients

1.5 pounds sugar
1 pint water
large fruits (peaches)

Directions

Make the syrup

Combine 1 pint of water with 1.5 pounds of sugar in a preserving kettle.
Heat gently until the mixture boils and becomes clear, skimming off any foam.

Preserve the peaches

Once clear, add the peaches to the syrup for canning.

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.

Sugar + peachtop 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, in a syrup, helps preserve it by binding water and limiting spoilage.
Peaches: Provide the fruit that is preserved and flavored by the hot sugar syrup.

“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.