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Dessert

Peach Butter

A preserve made by cooking ripe peaches with sugar and water until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,308 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Peach Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Pare the ripe peaches.

  2. Place the peaches in a preserving kettle.

  3. Add enough water to boil the peaches until soft.

  4. Sift the mixture through a colander to remove the stones.

Cook the butter

  1. For each quart of peach puree, add 1½ pounds of sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture very slowly for one hour, stirring often to prevent burning.

  3. Transfer the mixture to stone or glass jars.

  4. Store the jars in a cool 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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ripe peaches
Provide the fruit pulp, flavor and body that the butter is made from.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it thickens with long cooking, helps set the butter.

The step that matters

Boil very slowly and stir often. Sugar-rich fruit scorches easily on the bottom of the pan. Slow boiling with frequent stirring reduces the water gradually and prevents burning, which would give a bitter taste.

“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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