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Dessert

Peach Marmalade

A sweet preserve made from peaches, sugar, lemon juice, and optional kernels.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Peach Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the marmalade

  1. Combine the peaches and sugar in a pot over medium heat.

  2. Remove from heat after the sugar is mixed in.

  3. Let it sit for 2 minutes.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  5. Skim off any scum.

  6. Add the lemon juice.

  7. Boil for an additional 3 minutes.

  8. Add blanched peach kernels if desired and stir.

Jar and cool

  1. Pour the marmalade into jars.

  2. Let it cool.

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

Peaches
Provide the fruit base and natural pectin-bearing flesh that gives the marmalade its body and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as it dissolves and cooks down, thickens the mixture and helps it set.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the peach flavor and helps the marmalade set.

The step that matters

Skim off any scum. Foam that rises as the fruit and sugar come to a boil contains impurities that can cloud the marmalade and spoil its texture, so it should be removed before the final boil.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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