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Dessert

Suedoise of Peaches

A French dessert of peaches preserved in a sweet syrup and marmalade, served with macaroons or candied citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare the peaches

  1. Peel and divide the 4 peaches.

  2. Immerse them in a syrup made from ½ cup water and ½ cup sugar for 5 to 8 minutes.

Make the marmalade and syrup

  1. Boil the additional 2 pounds of peaches until they become a smooth pulp or marmalade, adding more sugar as needed.

  2. Remove the first peaches from the syrup and reduce the syrup by boiling it quickly until it thickens.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread a layer of the marmalade in a dish, arrange the peaches around it, and fill the spaces with more marmalade.

  2. Place half of a blanched peach kernel in each peach, pour the reduced syrup over the dish, and border with macaroons or candied citron.

  3. Add a little lemon juice to enhance the flavor.

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, flavor and the smooth pulp that forms the marmalade.
Sugar
Sweetens the peaches and, when boiled, thickens the syrup and marmalade.

The step that matters

Reducing the syrup by boiling it quickly until it thickens. Boiling concentrates the sugar and water loss thickens the syrup. If it is under-reduced it will stay thin and runny over the dish; if over-boiled it can turn too stiff or sticky once cooled.

Swap the lemon

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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