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Dessert

Suedoise of Peaches

A peach dessert made by simmering peaches in syrup, forming a marmalade, and arranging peaches with peach kernels and candied citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 947 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Suedoise of Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the peaches

  1. Pare and divide the peaches.

  2. Simmer them in a syrup made with water and sugar for 5 to 8 minutes.

  3. Carefully lift the peaches into a deep dish and pour half the syrup over them.

Make the marmalade

  1. In the remaining syrup, add 2 pounds of ripe peaches and boil until it becomes a smooth pulp.

  2. Add additional sugar to the pulp as needed.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the marmalade in a dish.

  2. Arrange the peaches around the marmalade and fill the spaces with more marmalade.

  3. Place half a blanched peach kernel in each peach.

  4. Pour the reduced syrup over the dish.

  5. Border the dish with Italian macaroons or thinly sliced candied citron.

  6. Add a little lemon juice to enhance the flavor, if desired.

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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 flavor and the soft body of both the poached peaches and the marmalade.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and the marmalade, and helps the pulp thicken as it reduces.
Water
Forms the syrup that gently poaches the peaches and carries their flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling the peach pulp to a smooth marmalade. Boiling reduces moisture and concentrates sugar and pectin in the fruit, so the pulp sets thick and smooth. Too little cooking leaves it runny, while over-boiling can scorch it and make it taste bitter.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peach, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, sugar. 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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