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Peach Marmalade

A preserve made from peeled, chopped peaches and brown sugar, simmered and jarred with brandy-soaked paper and flour paste seal.

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 ↓

Peach Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel the peaches, remove the stones, and weigh the fruit.

  2. Chop the peaches very fine and mix thoroughly with the sugar.

Cook the marmalade

  1. Put the mixture into a preserving kettle and let it simmer steadily for 2 hours, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

  2. Transfer the marmalade into glass jars.

Cover and seal

  1. Once cooled, cover the jars with paper soaked in brandy and seal with flour paste.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

  4. Peach + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together787 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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

Soft yellow peaches
Provide the fruit bulk, natural pectin, and flavor that form the marmalade.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the fruit and thickens the mixture as it cooks down, helping it set.

The step that matters

Stirring during the simmer. Peach mixtures are high in sugar and thick as they cook, so the bottom can scorch. Constant stirring over the two hours spreads heat evenly and prevents burnt flavor.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, flour. 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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