Skip to main content
Drink

Peach Cordial

A sweet peach cordial made by macerating peaches in brandy, adding sugar and water, and blending with brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Steep the peaches

  1. Cut the peaches to the stone in several places and fill jars or a cask with them.

  2. Cover the peaches with peach brandy and let them sit for eight weeks.

Make the syrup and finish

  1. To every gallon of the mixture, add 2 pounds of sugar and ½ pint of water.

  2. Make a syrup by boiling the sugar and water until dissolved, then let it cool.

  3. Mix equal parts of the syrup and peach brandy, then bottle or keep in the cask.

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. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Brandy and sugar 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
Supply the main peach flavour as their juices and aromas steep into the spirit.
Peach brandy
Extracts flavour from the fruit and, at this strength, helps preserve the mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cordial and softens the sharpness of the alcohol.

The step that matters

Covering the peaches with brandy. The fruit must stay fully submerged during the eight weeks. Exposed fruit can spoil, and the alcohol can only draw out flavour from the parts it touches.

Swap the peach

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

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

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

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes