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Dessert

Brandy Peaches

A preserved peach dessert made by boiling peaches in sugar syrup and brandy.

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

Why it works: Peach and brandy work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 339 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Brandy Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Peel the peaches and place them in hot water.

Make the brandied syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine 1 pound of sugar and ½ pint of water.

  2. Boil and remove scum until the syrup is clear.

  3. Cool the syrup and mix it with an equal amount of brandy.

Cook and jar the peaches

  1. In another pot, boil 1 pound of sugar with 2 quarts of water.

  2. Skim the boiling mixture until clear.

  3. Add a few peaches at a time and boil until tender under slight pressure.

  4. Remove the peaches and place them in jars.

  5. Cover the peaches with the brandied syrup.

  6. Seal the jars airtight.

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. Peach + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together339 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. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Morris white peaches
Provide the fruit that is poached until tender and flavoured by the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the peaches.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the peaches until tender under slight pressure. Boiling too long breaks down the fruit, while too short leaves it firm. Skimming the syrup first keeps it clear and free of scum that would cloud the finished preserve.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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