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Peach Syrup

A sweet syrup made from peach peelings, kernels, lemon juice, and sugar.

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

Peach Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Place peach peelings and peach kernels in a stone jar with a little water.

  2. Boil on the back of the stove until soft.

  3. Strain through a jelly bag and let it drip overnight.

  4. In the morning, add lemon juice and boil as you would jelly.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 1 pint of the juice for 5 minutes.

  2. Add sugar and boil for 5 more minutes, ensuring it boils very hard.

  3. Bottle in wide-mouthed bottles or jars and seal.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Peach kernels
Add a subtle almond-like aroma to the juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and helps the syrup set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, once boiled, thickens the syrup and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup hard after adding sugar. Sugar must dissolve fully and the mixture must reach a hard, rolling boil so it reaches the concentration needed to thicken and keep well. A weak boil leaves the syrup thin and more prone to spoiling in storage.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe 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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