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Brandied Peaches

A fruit preserve made by cooking peaches in a sugar syrup, then adding brandy.

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

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by dissolving sugar in water and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the peaches and boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Carefully remove the peaches and let the syrup boil for 15 minutes or until it thickens.

Finish and seal

  1. Add the brandy to the syrup and remove from heat.

  2. Pour the hot syrup over the peaches and seal in glass jars.

  3. If a reddish liquid oozes from the peaches, drain it off before adding the syrup.

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
Form the fruit base, providing the main flavour and soft texture of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and thickens it as it boils, helping it coat and hold the fruit.
Brandy
Adds aroma and warm flavour; it is added off the heat so its alcohol and scent are not boiled away.

The step that matters

Add the brandy off the heat. Alcohol is volatile and evaporates quickly at boiling temperatures. Removing the syrup from the heat before adding the brandy keeps more of its aroma and flavour in the finished peaches.

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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