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Canned Peach Jelly

A gelatin-based jelly made from canned peaches, sugar, lemon juice or brandy, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 947 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Canned Peach Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 1 hour.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, heat the peach juice with granulated sugar until it boils and becomes clear, skimming off any scum.

  2. Add the peaches and boil briefly, then remove them carefully without breaking.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the hot syrup over the gelatine, add lemon juice or brandy, and boiling water.

  2. Stir constantly over heat until the gelatine is fully dissolved.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Place the peaches in a mold and pour the liquid jelly over them.

  5. Set the mold in a cold place until the jelly is firm.

  6. Once firm, turn the jelly out of the mold and serve.

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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps give the jelly its body.
Peach juice
Provides the main peach flavour and liquid for the jelly.
Peaches
Supply fruit flavour and texture inside the set jelly.
Lemon juice or brandy
Adds acidity or aroma that brightens the sweet peach flavour.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatine fully. Gelatine must dissolve completely in hot liquid, or it will not set evenly and may leave grainy or soft patches. Stirring over gentle heat helps it dissolve without boiling, since prolonged boiling can weaken its setting power.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, 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.

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