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Dessert

Compote of Peaches

A compote made by stewing peaches in a light syrup of sugar and water, optionally with lemon juice or blanched kernels.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Compote of Peaches

Why it works: Peach and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 947 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Compote of Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and water together for 10 minutes to create the syrup.

Cook the peaches

  1. Pare the peaches and stew them in a light syrup made with sugar and water.

  2. Cook the peaches for 18 to 20 minutes, turning them often.

Finish and serve

  1. Dish the peaches and reduce the syrup by boiling quickly.

  2. Pour the reduced syrup over the peaches and serve hot or cold.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Ripe peaches
Provide the fruit, which softens and sweetens as it stews in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and forms the syrup that the peaches cook in.
Water
Dissolves the sugar to make a light syrup for stewing the fruit.

The step that matters

Reducing the syrup by boiling quickly. Boiling the syrup fast evaporates water and concentrates the sugar, so it thickens and gives a richer coating. Boiling too gently or too long can make it overly sticky or syrupy.

Swap the peach

The recipe marks peach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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