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Dessert

Peach Preserves

A preserve made by cooking peaches with sugar, water, cloves, allspice, and peach kernels.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Peach Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

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

  2. Weigh the peaches.

  3. Place the peaches in cold water until ready to cook.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, boil sugar and water until clear.

  2. Remove all scum from the boiling mixture.

  3. Add cloves and allspice tied in a small bag.

  4. Add a few peach kernels cut into small pieces.

Cook and preserve

  1. Add the peaches to the pot.

  2. Cook the peaches slowly until tender.

  3. Remove the peaches carefully with a perforated skimmer.

  4. Place the peaches in jars.

  5. Boil the syrup until thick.

  6. Pour the thick syrup over the peaches.

  7. 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.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Peach + allspicetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

  5. Sugar + allspicetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,938 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Crawford peaches
Provide the fruit that softens during slow cooking and forms the preserve's body.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it thickens, helps the syrup set and preserve the fruit.
Water
Dissolves the sugar into a syrup before the peaches are added.

The step that matters

Cook the peaches slowly until tender. Slow cooking softens the fruit evenly without breaking it apart. Vigorous boiling can make peaches fall apart and turn the syrup cloudy.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, allspice. 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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