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Dessert

Peach Butter

Peach Butter is a sweet preserve made by cooking peaches with sugar and water.

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 the ripe peaches.

  2. Place them in a preserving kettle with enough water to boil them soft.

  3. Sift the peaches through a colander to remove the stones.

Make the butter

  1. Add 1½ pounds of sugar for each quart of peaches.

  2. Boil slowly for one hour, stirring often to prevent burning.

Jar and store

  1. Transfer the mixture into stone or glass jars.

  2. Store in a cool place.

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

Ripe peaches
Provide the bulk, flavour and soft pulp that cooks down into a smooth spread.
Sugar
Sweetens the butter and, as it cooks down, thickens it and helps it keep.

The step that matters

Boiling slowly while stirring often. As the mixture cooks down, the sugar and fruit concentrate and thicken, and they can stick to the bottom of the kettle and scorch. Frequent stirring keeps the heat even and prevents burnt flavour.

“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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