Cocktails with Peach purée
Peach purée is peach flesh blended and sieved smooth, added to drinks as a fruit base.
How it's used
It gives fruit, gentle sweetness and body in one measure, and the body is what makes a Bellini a Bellini instead of peach-flavored Prosecco. White peach is the traditional choice: floral against the jammy fullness of yellow. Taste for sugar before you build, since bar purées run from unsweetened to nearly syrup.
Substitutes for Peach purée
Make your own: blend ripe peeled peaches, white ones for a Bellini, and strain. About ⅛ teaspoon of ascorbic acid powder per liter of purée stops browning; lemon juice works less well and adds sourness. Canned peaches in juice, drained and blended, work one for one and are only a little sweeter. Peaches in heavy syrup carry about twice the sugar of fresh fruit. If the recipe has syrup, use about ¾ barspoon less 2:1 syrup per 30 ml of purée.
Peach nectar
Purée thinned with water and sweetened, about 11 g of sugar per 100 g. One for one, the drink comes out thinner and slightly sweeter.
White and yellow peach purée
White peaches are usually lower in acid and more delicate, yellow ones tarter and fuller. A drink built for white peach comes out sharper, and more orange in color, with yellow.
Storage
Fresh keeps a couple of days refrigerated and freezes well in portions. It browns at the surface as it oxidizes, which a squeeze of lemon slows. Commercial keeps to its date and belongs in the fridge once open.
