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Fruit, to Prepare for Brandy

Fruit preserved in brandy after soaking, boiling sugar, and mixing with brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Fruit, to Prepare for Brandy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Gather fruit before it is perfectly ripe.

  2. Dry the fruit carefully.

  3. Prick the fruit.

  4. Soak the fruit in cold water.

  5. Heat the water over moderate heat until nearly boiling.

  6. When the fruit is tender, transfer it to cold water again.

  7. Drain the water.

  8. Add fresh water.

  9. Change the water again after 15 minutes.

  10. Drain the fruit one last time.

  11. Place the fruit in bottles.

  12. Set aside any broken or bruised fruit.

Make the syrup and finish

  1. Clarify the sugar.

  2. Boil the sugar to a nappe consistency.

  3. Measure the sugar.

  4. Add double its quantity of brandy.

  5. Mix the sugar and brandy.

  6. Pour the mixture over the fruit in the bottles.

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. Peach + sugartop 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

Peaches
Form the fruit that is preserved, softening when cooked and absorbing the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, boiled to nappe, thickens the syrup that preserves it.
Brandy
Adds alcohol that helps preserve the fruit and gives it a rich flavour.

The step that matters

Heat the water until nearly boiling, not fully boiling. Holding the water just below a boil cooks the fruit until tender while keeping its shape. A hard boil can break the fruit apart and make it mushy.

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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