Skip to main content
Dessert

Preserved Peaches

Preserved peaches are peaches steamed and then canned in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Preserved Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Steam the peaches

  1. Pare the peaches and place them in a steamer over boiling water, covering tightly.

  2. Steam for 15 minutes or until easily pierced with a fork.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup using ½ pound of sugar for every pound of fruit.

  2. Skim the syrup well before pouring over the fruit.

Pack and seal

  1. Drop each steamed peach into the syrup for a few seconds, then place in cans.

  2. Pour the hot syrup over the fruit in the cans and seal immediately.

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 + 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

Peaches
Provide the fruit itself, which softens when steamed and holds its shape in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as a syrup, helps preserve it by reducing available water.

The step that matters

Seal the cans immediately after pouring the hot syrup. Hot syrup and hot fruit in sealed cans create a vacuum as they cool, and sealing while hot helps keep air and microbes out. Delay lets air in and weakens preservation.

“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