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Peach Conserve

A sweet preserve made from peaches, sugar, raisins, water, and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and walnut work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 647 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Peach Conserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Pare and slice the peaches.

  2. In a pot, combine the peaches, sugar, raisins, and water.

  3. Cook until the mixture is thick enough to keep in jars.

Finish

  1. Add the walnuts just before removing from the heat.

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. Raisin + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  3. Peach + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Peach + raisintop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41 recipes

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

  5. 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 the body of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as it concentrates during cooking, helps the preserve thicken and keep.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavor that contrasts with the soft fruit.

The step that matters

Cooking until thick enough to keep. As water evaporates, the sugar and fruit concentrate and the mixture thickens. Stopping too early leaves a thin preserve that is more likely to spoil, while cooking too long makes it stiff and overly sweet.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, sugar, raisin. 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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