Name: Canned Peaches
Ingredients: 1 pound peaches, peeled and sliced; ½ pound sugar

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

Ingredients

1 pound peaches, peeled and sliced
½ pound sugar

Directions

Prepare the peaches

Select ripe peaches and peel them.
Slice the peaches and place them in a pot.
Add ½ pound of sugar to the peaches.

Cook and strain

Cook the mixture until the peaches are soft.
Drain the juice through a jelly bag.

Jar and store

Seal the juice in glass jars, wrapping them in paper for protection.
Store the jars in a cool, dry, and dark place.

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: Provide the fruit flesh and flavour that form the base of the preserve.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps preserve the fruit by binding water it would otherwise hold.

“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.