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Peach Preserves

A preserve made by cooking peaches with sugar and a little water until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the fruit and ensure the peaches are not overripe.

  2. Place peaches in a kettle, layering them with sugar (1 tablespoon per quart of fruit).

  3. Add a little water to prevent burning.

Cook and seal

  1. Heat slowly to a boil, then boil for 3 to 4 minutes.

  2. Can and seal the fruit.

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

Peaches
Supply the fruit, flavor and bulk of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out juice to form a syrup that helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Heat slowly to a boil. Peaches and sugar can scorch on the bottom of the kettle if heated too fast before enough juice releases. Slow heating lets the sugar dissolve and the fruit soften evenly, and the added water helps prevent burning while this happens.

“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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