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Peaches in Brandy

Peaches stewed with sugar and water, then preserved in brandy in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and brandy work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 339 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Peaches in Brandy

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare and stew the peaches with ½ cup sugar and ½ pint water until tender.

Jar and cover

  1. Place the peaches and their syrup into glass or new stone jars, filling them only halfway.

  2. Once the peaches are completely cool, pour in the brandy until it is 1½ inches from the brim.

  3. Optionally, add a few peach or apricot kernels.

  4. Cork the jars tightly.

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 + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together339 recipes

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

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

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

  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

Peaches
Provide the main fruit flavour and the soft, tender texture of the finished preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the stewing syrup and helps balance the fruit's natural tartness.
White or pale french brandy
Adds aroma and flavour, and its alcohol helps preserve the fruit in the jar.

The step that matters

Let the peaches cool completely before adding the brandy. Heat drives off alcohol, so pouring brandy onto hot fruit wastes its aroma and strength. Cooling first keeps the spirit's flavour and preserving effect in the jar.

Swap the peach

The recipe marks peach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Peachthe 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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