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Dessert

Peach Jelly

A fruit jelly made from peaches and sour juicy apples, boiled with water and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 303 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Peach Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut peaches and apples into pieces without peeling them.

  2. Cover the fruit with water and boil until the pulp is well cooked.

  3. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag without squeezing.

Make the jelly

  1. Transfer the liquid to a porcelain kettle or crock and boil until it thickens slightly, but is not as thick as molasses.

  2. Weigh an equal amount of sugar to the liquid and add 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 + appletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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 main flavor and body of the jelly.
Sour juicy apples
Contribute pectin and acidity, which help the jelly set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the jelly set and keep.

The step that matters

Boiling down the liquid. The liquid must thicken only slightly before sugar is added. Boiling too little leaves the jelly runny, while boiling too long makes it stiff once it cools. Pectin and sugar concentration together determine the final set.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peach, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, sugar. 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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