Name: Peach Compote
Ingredients: Peaches; Water; Sugar; Cinnamon bark; Cloves; Wine (optional); Sweet cream

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Peach Compote

Ingredients

Directions

Peel the peaches and leave them whole.
Place the peaches in a porcelain-lined kettle with enough sweetened water to cover them.
Boil the peaches until they are quite tender.
Add cinnamon bark and a few cloves to the kettle.
Remove the peaches with a slotted spoon and place them on a serving dish.
Boil the syrup until it thickens, then pour it over the peaches.
For added flavor, you can add a little wine while cooking.
Serve the compote cold with sweet cream.

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Peach + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together625 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Peach + clovetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together280 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cinnamon, clove, wine, cream):

Vanillafits better
Quincefits better
Applefits better
Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, clove, wine, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.