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Dessert

Peach Compote

A compote of peaches simmered with water, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, and optional wine, served cold with sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Peach Compote

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the peaches and leave them whole.

  2. In a porcelain-lined kettle, combine the peaches with sweetened water.

  3. Add the cloves and cinnamon stick.

Cook the fruit

  1. Boil the peaches until tender.

  2. If desired, add wine while cooking the fruit.

Make the syrup and serve

  1. Remove the peaches with a perforated skimmer.

  2. Place the peaches in a fruit dish.

  3. Boil the syrup until thick.

  4. Pour the thick syrup over the peaches.

  5. Serve cold with sweet cream.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Peach + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Peach + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Provide the fruit that softens during boiling and becomes the main body of the compote.
Sugar
Sweetens the poaching liquid and, as it thickens, forms the syrup that coats the fruit.
Wine
Adds acidity and a fruity aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thick. Boiling concentrates the sugar and water loss thickens the liquid into a syrup. If it is boiled too little it stays thin and runs off the fruit; if boiled too long it can turn sticky or caramelise.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, clove, cinnamon, wine, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, cinnamon, wine, cream. 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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