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Dessert

Peaches and Apricots

A preserve of peaches cooked with sugar and water.

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

Peaches and Apricots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Place the peaches in a wire basket.

  2. Plunge them into boiling water until the skins slip off easily.

  3. Halve the peaches or leave them whole.

  4. Add a few pits for flavor.

  5. Weigh the fruit.

Make the syrup

  1. Measure out ¾ or ½ as much sugar as the weight of the fruit.

  2. Add ½ as much water as you have sugar.

  3. Cook until thick, about the consistency of molasses.

Cook and jar

  1. Add the fruit to the syrup.

  2. Cook until transparent.

  3. Remove any scum that forms.

  4. Skim the fruit from the syrup.

  5. Fill jars, pouring in syrup until full.

  6. If the syrup is thin, cook it down further.

  7. Pour into jars.

  8. Tightly screw on the covers.

  9. Turn jars bottom side up.

  10. Tighten the covers as they cool.

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 main fruit, flavor and body of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it cooks down, helps it set thick.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can form a syrup that cooks evenly.

The step that matters

Cook the syrup until thick. Sugar concentration determines set. Cooking the syrup until it reaches a molasses-like thickness drives off water so the preserve sets properly. If it stays thin, it may not gel and can spoil sooner, which is why the record advises cooking it down further.

“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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