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Dessert

Brandt Peaches

A fruit preserve made by boiling peaches, making a syrup, adding brandy, and storing in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Brandt Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Boil water and pour it over the peaches.

  2. Cover the peaches and let them sit for 20 minutes.

  3. Use a cloth to remove the skins from the peaches.

Cook in syrup

  1. Prepare a syrup using half the weight of the fruit in sugar and water.

  2. Add enough peaches to the syrup to float on top.

  3. Boil the peaches in syrup for 15 minutes.

  4. Remove the peaches and let them cool on a dish.

Preserve with brandy

  1. For every quart of syrup, add one quart of brandy.

  2. Place the peaches in jars, cover them with the brandy and syrup, and seal tightly to exclude air.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Peach + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together339 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Peach + syruptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. 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
The main fruit, which is softened by hot water and gently cooked in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit's texture and flavour.
Brandy
Adds flavour and, at this strength, helps preserve the peaches in the jars.

The step that matters

Sealing the jars tightly. Excluding air limits oxidation and spoilage microbes, so the jars must be sealed well once the peaches are covered with brandy and syrup.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup, 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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