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Dessert

Peach Compote

Peach compote is a sweetened peach dish simmered with spices and optionally wine, served cold with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Peach Compote

Ingredients

Directions

Make the compote

  1. Pare the peaches and leave them whole.

  2. In a porcelain-lined kettle, boil the peaches in sweetened water with cloves and a stick of cinnamon.

  3. Boil until the peaches are tender, then remove them with a perforated skimmer and place them in a fruit dish.

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

  5. If desired, add wine while cooking the fruit.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with sweet cream.

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. 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
Provide the fruit that softens during simmering and becomes tender and sweet.
Sweetened water
Forms the syrup that sweetens the peaches and thickens when boiled down.
Cinnamon stick
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup and fruit.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Boil until the peaches are tender. Peaches must be cooked until tender but not so long that they fall apart. Pectin and cell walls soften with heat, so checking for tenderness with a skimmer prevents overcooking and mushy fruit.

Swap the peach

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

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

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