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Brandied Peaches or Pears

A sweet preserve made by simmering peaches or pears in a sugar syrup, finished with 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 or Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup and cook the fruit

  1. Make a syrup by dissolving the sugar in water and bringing it to a boil.

  2. Add the fruit and boil for 5 minutes.

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

Finish and jar

  1. Stir in the brandy and remove the kettle from the heat.

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

  3. Peel the peaches or pears and prick them with a pin before cooking.

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

Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and thickens the syrup as its water cooks away.
Peaches or pears
Provides the fruit that softens in the syrup and carries its flavor.
White brandy
Adds aroma and flavor; stirred in off the heat so less of it cooks away.

The step that matters

Stir in the brandy after removing the kettle from the heat. Alcohol and volatile aroma compounds evaporate during prolonged boiling, so adding the brandy off the heat keeps more of its flavor in the finished syrup.

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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