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Dessert

Peach Butter

Peach butter is a preserve made by cooking peaches with water and sugar, then pressing and jarred.

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

Peach Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Peel and halve the peaches.

  2. Place them in a kettle with enough water to cook until soft.

  3. Remove from heat and press through a colander.

Cook the butter

  1. For every quart of fruit, add 3 cups of sugar.

  2. Boil for one hour, stirring constantly to prevent scorching.

  3. Transfer to glass or stone jars and cover with paraffin.

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 main fruit body, pectin and natural sugars that thicken and flavor the butter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the butter as the water evaporates during boiling.

The step that matters

Boil for one hour, stirring constantly. Sugar-rich fruit sits near the bottom of a kettle and scorches easily under direct heat. Constant stirring keeps the mixture moving and prevents burnt flavor and sticking as the water evaporates and the butter thickens.

“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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