Skip to main content
Dessert

Brandy Peaches

Peaches preserved in brandy and syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Brandy Peaches

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

  1. Scald the peaches in hot water, then in strong hot lye.

  2. Rub them with a cloth and place them in cold water.

  3. Weigh the peaches after wiping them dry.

Make the syrup and cook the peaches

  1. In a porcelain kettle, boil 5 pounds of sugar with 5 small glasses of water until it thickens into syrup.

  2. Drop in the peaches and boil until you can pierce them with a fork.

  3. Remove the peaches and place them on dishes.

  4. Pour the syrup into a bowl and let it sit overnight.

Steep and jar

  1. Cover the peaches with brandy in another bowl and let them sit overnight.

  2. Remove the peaches from the brandy and place them in jars.

  3. Mix equal parts of brandy and syrup, then pour it over the peaches in the jars until they are covered.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

  3. 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
Form the fruit that is cooked in syrup and soaked in brandy.
Sugar
Forms the syrup that sweetens the peaches and helps preserve them.
Brandy
Adds flavor and alcohol that soaks into the peaches and helps preserve them.

The step that matters

Boiling the peaches until they can be pierced with a fork. Boiling softens the fruit enough for a fork to pass through while keeping it whole. Overcooking breaks the peaches down, and undercooking leaves them firm and less able to absorb the syrup.

Swap the peach

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

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

You might also like

Peach Ice CreamPeach Ice Cream64 recipesPeach FrittersPeach Fritters55 recipesPeach MeringuePeach Meringue40 recipesBrandy CreamBrandy Cream21 recipes