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Brandied Peaches

Peaches preserved in brandy and syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Brandied Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Peel the peaches.

  2. Cook them in a syrup made from 1 pound of sugar for every pound of peaches and enough water to dissolve the sugar until clear.

  3. Remove the peaches from the syrup.

Make the brandied syrup

  1. Boil the syrup until it thickens.

  2. Add 1 quart of brandy to the thickened syrup.

Jar and store

  1. Place the peaches in glass jars.

  2. Pour the hot syrup over the peaches in the jars.

  3. Seal the jars.

  4. Store them in a cool, dark place.

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 fruit, which softens in the syrup and becomes the main flavour of the preserve.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the syrup and thickens it as it boils, helping preserve the fruit.
White brandy
Adds alcohol and aroma, which help preserve the fruit and give it a warm flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup until it thickens. Boiling concentrates the sugar so the syrup thickens and holds more of the fruit's shape and sweetness. Adding brandy to a syrup that is still thin would dilute the preserving strength and flavour.

Swap the peach

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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