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Dessert

Spiced Peaches

A preserved fruit dish of peaches stewed in brown sugar and vinegar with allspice, mace, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the peaches.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by combining brown sugar and vinegar in a pot.

Cook and pack

  1. Add the peaches to the syrup and boil until tender.

  2. Place the peaches in a jar with the spices tied in muslin bags.

  3. Seal and store the jar.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Peach + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Clingstone peaches
Provide the fruit that softens and absorbs the spiced syrup.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the syrup and adds caramel-like depth of flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the fruit.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup and fruit.
Cinnamon
Adds sweet, woody aroma to the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the peaches until tender. Boiling softens the fruit enough to absorb the syrup and spices, but overcooking can make it mushy and fall apart.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

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