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To Brandy Peaches

Peaches preserved in a sugar syrup and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and brandy work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 339 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Brandy Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Combine 3 pounds of sugar and 1½ pints of water in a pot, boil, and skim the mixture.

  2. Wash 8 pounds of ripe clingstone peaches with a coarse towel to remove the down.

Cook the peaches

  1. Pierce each peach with a fork, add them to the syrup, and boil until a sharp straw can puncture them.

  2. Transfer the softened peaches to a jar that is kept closely covered.

Add brandy and seal

  1. Continue boiling the syrup until it thickens; while hot, add 1 quart of brandy and pour it over the peaches.

  2. Seal the jar tightly.

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 + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together339 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Clingstone peaches
Provide the fruit that softens in the syrup and carries the flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and thickens it as it boils down.
Brandy
Adds aroma and alcohol that helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup until it thickens before adding brandy. Brandy is added to the hot syrup, so the syrup should be boiled to the stated thickness first. Adding brandy too early leaves a thinner syrup and dilutes the alcohol, which weakens the preserving effect and the flavor.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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