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Peach IMarinalade

A sweet peach jam made by cooking peaches with sugar, lemon juice, and a kernel infusion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 IMarinalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Select ripe peaches.

  2. Peel the peaches.

  3. Stone the peaches.

  4. Weigh the peaches.

Make the jam

  1. Cook the peaches slowly in their own juices without adding water for 45 minutes.

  2. Crack the kernels from ⅓ of the pits and simmer in 1 pint of water for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the liquid.

  4. Add the strained liquid to the peaches after they have been cooking for 45 minutes and have become a smooth jam.

  5. Add ¾ pound of sugar for every pound of peaches and the juice of 1 lemon for every 4 pounds of jam.

  6. Boil for 10 minutes.

  7. Skim off any foam.

  8. Seal 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.

  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 that cooks down into the jam and supplies its flavor and body.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it set to a thick, spreadable texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and supports gel setting.
Pit kernels
Simmered in water to make a strained liquid that adds aroma to the jam.

The step that matters

Add the sugar and lemon juice after the peaches have become a smooth jam. Adding sugar and acid before the fruit has softened can toughen the peaches and slow their breakdown. Adding them once the fruit is smooth lets the pectin and acid work together to set the jam properly.

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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