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Dessert

Old-fashioned Peach Preserves

A preserve made by peeling peaches, mixing with sugar, and boiling the mixture until clear.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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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 ↓

Old-fashioned Peach Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate the peaches

  1. Peel the peaches and mix them with the sugar.

  2. Let them sit overnight.

Cook the preserves

  1. In the morning, pour off the syrup and bring it to a boil.

  2. Pour the hot syrup over the peaches.

  3. Repeat this process twice.

  4. Combine everything and boil until the mixture looks clear.

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 flavor and the solid pieces that make up the preserves.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit, draws moisture out of it to form syrup, and helps the mixture thicken.

The step that matters

Boiling until the mixture looks clear. Sugar and fruit must reach a high enough concentration to thicken and keep. Stopping too early leaves the preserves loose and more prone to spoiling, while boiling too long can make them overly stiff and dark.

“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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