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Peaches Preserved in Brandy

Peaches preserved in brandy are sweetened, simmered, and sealed with syrup and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Peaches Preserved in Brandy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Gather ripe peaches and make syrup by boiling 10 ounces of sugar with ¾ pint of water until dissolved.

Cook and jar the peaches

  1. Pare the peaches and simmer them in the syrup until tender enough for a needle to pass through.

  2. Lift the peaches out with a skimmer and place them in a jar, filling it only halfway.

  3. Pour the syrup over the peaches, leaving 2 inches from the top, and add blanched kernels if desired.

Add brandy and store

  1. Once the syrup is cold, fill the jar with brandy, cork it tightly, and cover the cork with bladder.

  2. Check the jars occasionally and add more brandy as the fruit absorbs it.

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. Sugar + peachtop 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
Provide the fruit that softens in the syrup and absorbs the brandy over time.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Brandy
Acts as the preserving liquid that keeps the fruit stable and adds flavour.

The step that matters

Let the syrup cool before adding brandy. Adding brandy to hot syrup can drive off alcohol and its preserving effect, and hot liquid can soften the fruit further. Cooling first keeps the brandy's strength and the fruit's texture intact.

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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