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Dessert

Brandied Pears or Peaches

A sweet preserve of pears or peaches simmered in sugar syrup and finished with brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and brandy work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 157 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Brandied Pears or Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by dissolving sugar in water and bring it to a boil.

Cook the fruit and brandy

  1. Add the fruit and boil for 5 minutes.

  2. Carefully remove the fruit and let the syrup boil for 15 minutes longer, or until it thickens.

  3. Add the brandy and remove from heat immediately.

Pack and seal

  1. Pour the hot syrup over the fruit and seal.

  2. If a reddish liquid oozes from the fruit, drain it off before adding the clear syrup.

  3. Peel the peaches and pears before boiling.

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. Pear + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Pears or peaches
Provides the fruit flesh and its flavor, which is the body of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, at this concentration, helps preserve the fruit.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor; alcohol is lost quickly when it is heated, so it goes in last.

The step that matters

Add the brandy and remove from heat immediately. Alcohol evaporates quickly at boiling temperatures. Adding the brandy and taking the pan off the heat right away keeps most of its aroma and flavor in the syrup.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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