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Dessert

Compote of Peaches

A fruit compote made by boiling peaches with sweetened water, cloves, cinnamon, and optional wine, then served cold.

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

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Compote of Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the peaches

  1. Pare the peaches, leaving them whole.

  2. Boil the peaches in a porcelain-lined kettle with sweetened water.

  3. Add the cloves and cinnamon bark.

  4. Boil until the peaches are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the peaches with a perforated skimmer and place them in a fruit dish.

  2. Boil the syrup until thick, then pour it over the peaches.

  3. Serve 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Peach + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Peach + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Peach + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Cinnamon + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Form the main body of the compote, softening as they poach in the syrup.
Sweetened water
Forms the poaching syrup, carrying sweetness and flavour into the fruit.
Cinnamon bark
Adds warm aromatic flavour to the poaching syrup.
Cloves
Adds warm aromatic spice flavour to the poaching syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thick. Reducing the syrup concentrates its sugar and flavour, so it coats the peaches instead of thinning into a watery liquid. Boiling too briefly leaves the sauce weak.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, cinnamon, wine):

  1. Quincefits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, cinnamon, wine. 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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