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Dessert

Brandied Fruits

A preserved fruit dessert made by boiling fruit in a sugar syrup, then adding brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Brandied Fruits

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by dissolving the sugar in water and bringing it to a boil.

  2. Add the fruit and boil for five minutes.

  3. Carefully remove the fruit and let the syrup boil for an additional fifteen minutes or until it thickens.

Finish and seal

  1. Add the brandy and immediately remove the kettle from the heat.

  2. Pour the hot syrup over the fruit and seal in glass jars.

  3. If any reddish liquid oozes from the fruit, drain it off before adding the clear syrup.

  4. Peel peaches and pears before brandied, and prick plums to prevent bursting.

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. 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

Fruit
Provides the main body and flavour of the preserve.
Sugar
Dissolved into syrup to sweeten and help preserve the fruit.
White brandy
Adds alcohol and aroma, helping to preserve the finished fruit.

The step that matters

Removing the brandy from the heat. Brandy is alcohol that evaporates quickly when heated, so it is added last and the kettle is removed from the heat immediately to keep its flavour and strength.

“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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