Name: Stewed Dried Peaches
Ingredients: 12 pounds dried peaches; 5 pounds sugar; 1 teaspoon salt; cold water

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 ↓

Stewed Dried Peaches

Ingredients

12 pounds dried peaches
5 pounds sugar
1 teaspoon salt
cold water

Directions

Prepare

Soak the dried peaches overnight in cold water.
Drain the peaches and place them in a pot.

Stew and sweeten

Cover the peaches with cold water and boil for 40 minutes.
Add the sugar and salt, then simmer for 10 minutes.

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.

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

Dried peaches: Provide the fruit, which softens into tender pieces as they stew.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps give the stewed fruit a syrupy body.

“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.