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 ↓
Brandy Peaches
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the peaches
Select ripe white cling-stone peaches.
Make a hot lye of ashes and water.
Dip peaches in the lye for 1.5 minutes until skins rub off easily.
Transfer peaches to a vessel of cold water.
Rub off the skins with a cloth and place them in another vessel of cold water.
Make the syrup and pack
Prepare a syrup with ½ pound of sugar and 1 pound of fruit, similar to preserves.
Add peaches to the syrup and boil until tender enough to pierce with a straw.
Remove peaches and add 1 quart of the best white brandy to each pint of syrup.
Once cool, pack peaches into jars, leaving room for syrup.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Peach + brandytop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together339 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,308 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- White cling-stone peaches
- Provide the fruit that is cooked in syrup and softened to a tender texture.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit's shape and texture.
- White brandy
- Adds alcohol and aroma, and helps preserve the finished peaches.
The step that matters
Dipping the peaches in the lye. Leaving them in too long can soften or damage the flesh, while too short a dip leaves skins hard to remove. The brief lye bath loosens the skin so it rubs off easily without cooking the fruit.
Swap the peach
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy):
- Vanillafits better
- Apricotfits better
- Raisinfits better
- 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.
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