Skip to main content
Dessert

Peach Marmalade

A preserve made by cooking sliced peaches with sugar and water, finished with kernels and brandy‑dipped paper jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Peach Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kernels

  1. Pare the peaches, remove the stones, and crack one quarter of the stones to extract the kernels.

  2. Place the kernels in a saucepan, cover with water, and cook for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the water from the kernels, then slice the peaches thinly.

Make the marmalade

  1. In a porcelain preserving kettle, combine the sliced peaches and 1 pint of water.

  2. Cook for 10 minutes after boiling, then add the sugar and the water from the kernels.

  3. Stir well with a wooden spoon and cook for an additional 20 minutes.

Jar

  1. Pour the marmalade into glass jars or jelly glasses lined with double writing paper dipped in brandy.

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 + 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

Peaches
Provide the fruit, flavour and body of the marmalade as they cook down.
White granulated sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it thicken and keep as it cooks.
Peach kernels
Add a subtle almond-like aroma to the marmalade while they simmer in water.

The step that matters

Stir and cook after adding the sugar. Sugar dissolves and thickens the fruit as it cooks; stirring with a wooden spoon keeps the peaches from scorching on the bottom of the kettle while the mixture reduces.

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.

You might also like

Brandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesPeach Ice CreamPeach Ice Cream64 recipesPeach FrittersPeach Fritters55 recipesPeach MeringuePeach Meringue40 recipes