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Dessert

Peach Preserves

Peach preserves made by layering peaches with sugar, cooking with water, and adding stone water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,308 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Peach Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Pare the peaches, cut them in halves, and remove the stones.

  2. Layer the peaches cut side up with sugar in a porcelain preserving kettle.

  3. Finish with a layer of sugar on top.

  4. Pour the water into the kettle at the side.

Cook and rest

  1. Heat the kettle slowly for 1.5 hours.

  2. Crack ¼ of the stones, remove the kernels, and boil them in 1 pint of water for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the water and add it to the peaches.

  4. Heat the kettle over the fire until it reaches boiling heat, but do not let it boil.

  5. Cover the kettle and let it stand overnight.

Finish and can

  1. In the morning, heat it until boiling hot, but do not let it boil.

  2. Remove the peaches with a skimmer onto large porcelain dishes.

  3. Boil the syrup long enough to skim it well.

  4. Return the peaches to the kettle.

  5. Set it over a slow fire until the peaches look clear and are ready to be canned.

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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Provide the fruit, which softens and turns clear as the sugar syrup penetrates them.
White granulated sugar
Draws water out of the fruit and forms a thick syrup that preserves and sweetens the peaches.
Peach stones
Kernels boiled in water add a subtle almond-like aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Heating without boiling. Repeated heating just below boiling lets sugar slowly draw moisture from the peaches without breaking them apart. A rolling boil would toughen the fruit and make the syrup cloudy or over-thick.

“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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