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Cling-stone Peaches

Preserved peaches in a sugar syrup with lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cling-stone Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Peel the peaches and soak them in cold water until all are peeled.

Make the syrup

  1. Pour the soaking water into a kettle, add the sugar and beaten egg whites, and skim well.

  2. Add the lemon peel and the peaches to the kettle.

  3. Bring to a boil, then remove the peaches and let them cool.

Finish the peaches

  1. Return the peaches to the syrup and boil until easily penetrated with a straw.

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 + 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).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Cling-stone peaches
Provide the fruit that is cooked until tender in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the peaches' shape and texture.
Egg whites
Clarify the syrup by binding impurities so they can be skimmed off.

The step that matters

Returning the peaches to the syrup and boiling until a straw penetrates. Boiling in syrup must be stopped once the peaches are easily pierced; overcooking softens the fruit until it breaks apart. Cooling first lets the peaches firm slightly before the final cook.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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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