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Dessert

Peach Leather

Peach leather is a dried fruit spread made from mashed peaches, sugar, and optional cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 625 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Peach Leather

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pare the peaches, remove the stones, and mash them to a pulp.

  2. Extract the kernels from some seeds and pound the kernels to a paste.

  3. Mix the kernel paste with the fruit for flavor.

Cook the mixture

  1. In a preserving kettle, combine the sugar and boil the sugar mixture, skimming off any foam.

  2. Add the peach pulp to the kettle and simmer for about 30 minutes.

Dry and store

  1. Spread the mixture smoothly and thinly on dishes or clean boards.

  2. Expose the spread to the sun until dry.

  3. Sprinkle a little powdered cinnamon over each piece, if desired.

  4. Roll each piece into a scroll.

  5. Store in a dry place, occasionally exposing it to the air.

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 + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Ripe freestone peaches
Provide the main fruit pulp, flavor, and body for the leather.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the fruit pulp as it dries.

The step that matters

Simmer the peach pulp in the sugar syrup. Simmering concentrates the pulp and drives off water, so the spread thickens enough to dry into a pliable sheet rather than a sticky or runny one.

“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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