Name: Peach Sauce
Ingredients: 10 to 12 pounds ripe yellow peaches (clings preferred); 2 dozen peach seeds; 1 pint boiling water; ½ pound white sugar for every pound of fruit

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 ↓

Peach Sauce

Ingredients

10 to 12 pounds ripe yellow peaches (clings preferred)
2 dozen peach seeds
1 pint boiling water
½ pound white sugar for every pound of fruit

Directions

Prepare

Halve the peaches and place them in a kettle.
Add the peach seeds and boiling water.

Cook and seal

Let the mixture stew until it reduces.
Stir in the sugar and continue to stew until it thickens.
Seal the hot sauce in jars.

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

Ripe yellow peaches: Provide the main fruit body and flavor that the sauce is built from.
White sugar: Adds sweetness and, as it dissolves and cooks down, helps the sauce thicken.

“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.