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Dessert

Brandied Peaches

A dessert of peaches soaked, boiled with sugar, then steeped in brandy.

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

Brandied Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Soak peaches in a weak solution of hot soda until the fur loosens.

  2. Rub the peaches off with a coarse cloth.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil ½ pound of sugar with 1 pound of fruit for 5 minutes to make a syrup.

  2. Remove the fruit from the syrup.

  3. Boil the syrup for an additional 15 minutes or until thick.

  4. Add 1 pint of brandy for each pound of fruit to the syrup.

Jar and seal

  1. Pour the hot syrup over the fruit in glass jars.

  2. Seal the jars tightly.

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 + 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
Provide the fruit that is flavoured and preserved in the syrup and brandy.
White sugar
Forms the thick syrup that sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour and helps preserve the fruit in the syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup before adding brandy. Brandy is added after the syrup has cooked and thickened, because alcohol evaporates when boiled. Adding it too early would lose much of its flavour and strength.

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.

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