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Brandy Peaches

Peaches preserved in a lye solution, then cooked in sugar syrup and packed with brandy or whiskey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Brandy Peaches

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 ↓

Brandy Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Peel the peaches

  1. Prepare a lye solution that will float an egg and bring it to a boil.

  2. Add the peaches to the boiling solution, a few at a time.

  3. When the skins start to slip off, remove the peaches and rinse them in cold water.

  4. Wipe off the skins with a rough towel and place the peaches in fresh water until all are done.

Cook in syrup

  1. Make a syrup with ½ pound of sugar for each pound of peaches.

  2. Boil the skinned peaches in the syrup until tender.

Pack and seal

  1. Pack the peaches tightly in jars.

  2. Fill the jars with a mixture of half syrup and half whiskey or brandy.

  3. If the syrup is too thin, boil it down until thick before adding.

  4. Seal the jars carefully.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  3. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

Ripe peaches
Provide the fruit that softens and becomes tender in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, dissolved into syrup, helps preserve it.
Whiskey or brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Dipping the peaches in lye. Lye solution must be boiling and at the right strength to loosen the skins quickly. Leaving peaches too long can soften or damage the flesh, so remove them as soon as the skins begin to slip.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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