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Dessert

Peach Chutney

A sweet and spicy preserve made from peaches, sugar, sultanas, chillies, ginger, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and ginger work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 218 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Peach Chutney

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Select peaches that are not quite ripe.

  2. Split them open with a silver knife and remove the stones. Peel off the skins.

Cook

  1. Boil the sugar in 1 quart of vinegar.

  2. While boiling hot, add the peaches. Simmer until the peaches are soft.

  3. Then add the chillies, sultanas, ginger, and enough vinegar from the second quart to achieve the right consistency. Once cooled, stir well.

Bottle

  1. Bottle and cork.

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 + gingertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  3. Peach + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together348 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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, softening during simmering to form the chutney's body.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the chutney as it reduces.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the chutney and balances the sweetness.
Ginger
Adds sharp aromatic warmth that flavours the chutney.
Ground chillies
Adds heat and pungency to the chutney.

The step that matters

Adding enough vinegar from the second quart. The vinegar added after the chillies, sultanas and ginger sets the final consistency. Too little leaves the chutney thick and dry, while too much makes it thin and loose. Judge it by eye, since the record gives no quantity.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peach, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Peppermintfits about as well
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Clovefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, sugar, vinegar. 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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