Skip to main content
Dessert

Peach Preserves

A sweet preserve made by cooking peaches with sugar and water, then layering and reboiling over several days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Peach Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the peaches.

  2. Remove the pits.

  3. For every pound of peaches, use an equal weight of sugar.

  4. For every pound of peaches, use ½ cup of water.

  5. Boil the pits in water to extract flavor.

  6. Remove the pits after boiling.

  7. Add water to replace what has evaporated.

Cook the peaches

  1. Add the sugar.

  2. Skim the mixture thoroughly.

  3. Add a small quantity of peaches at a time.

  4. Cook slowly for about 10 minutes.

Jar and repeat

  1. Transfer the mixture to a jar.

  2. Add more peaches to the jar.

  3. Once all peaches are cooked, pour the boiling syrup over them.

  4. The next day, drain the syrup.

  5. Boil the syrup again.

  6. Pour the boiled syrup back over the peaches.

  7. Repeat this process for 2 or 3 days.

Seal

  1. Seal the jars with paper as directed for jellies, or if canning, the first boiling is sufficient.

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. 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

Peaches
Provide the fruit, flavor and body that the preserve is built around.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, helps preserve it by binding water.

The step that matters

Add the peaches a small quantity at a time. Adding too much fruit at once drops the syrup's boiling temperature and slows evaporation, so the peaches cook unevenly and the syrup stays thin. Small batches keep the syrup boiling so the fruit cooks through and the sugar concentrates properly.

“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.

More peach preserves recipes

Spiced 20Clingstone 4 See all 112 →

You might also like

Peach Ice CreamPeach Ice Cream64 recipesPeach FrittersPeach Fritters55 recipesPeach MeringuePeach Meringue40 recipesPeach IcePeach Ice16 recipes