Name: Canned Peaches and Pears
Ingredients: 255 peaches or pears; 1½ pounds sugar; 1 pint water

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 ↓

Canned Peaches and Pears

Ingredients

255 peaches or pears
1½ pounds sugar
1 pint water

Directions

Steam the fruit

Place a cloth in the bottom of a steamer over boiling water.
Fill the steamer with the fruit and cover tightly.
Steam for 15 minutes or until easily pierced with a fork.

Make the syrup

In a preserving kettle, combine 1 pint of water with 1½ pounds of sugar.
Boil gently and skim until the syrup is clear.
Drop each steamed fruit in the syrup for a moment.

Can and seal

Place the fruit in cans, filling each halfway.
Fill the cans with hot syrup, then cover and seal.

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.

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 or pears: Provide the fruit that is softened by steaming and preserved in the syrup.
Sugar: Sweetens the fruit and helps preserve its flavor in the syrup.

“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.