The most obvious change which takes place in curing peaches is the loss of water but several other important changes occur which even more materially alter the flavor of the product. According to C. F. Langworthy[210], Chief of the Office of Home Economics, United States Department of Agriculture, the carbohydrates which make up the largest part of the solid matter of fruits undergo greatest changes. The crude fibre, too, is reduced in amount or softened. Much of the starch is changed into some form of sugar and the less soluble sugar may be reduced to a more soluble form. Some of the volatile oils and other ethereal bodies, so important in giving flavor to fruits, pass off or are modified by the curing processes. These changes insure longer keeping in the product, give it greater food value than fresh fruit, pound for pound, leaving it quite as digestible, but not as refreshing and palatable. Peach-leather was a common dried peach-product in the old domestic epoch before the coming of railroads, steamboats and the establishment of canning and drying industries. Though not now common, peach-leather is still made in many communities in the East, more particularly in the southeastern states. The peaches are peeled, pitted and then mashed into a thin layer which is dried in the sun or an oven, the resulting product taking on the appearance of leather. Peach-leather is said to keep indefinitely, this being its chief merit. Peach-brandy is still a commercial product of considerable importance though the amount made nowadays, as compared with that made a hundred years ago before prohibition began to be preached, is but a drop in the bucket when the number of bushels raised is considered. According to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue,[211] the quantity of peach-brandy made in 1908, the last year reported, was 13,649.5 gallons, most of which came from California. Peach-brandy is made by converting the sugar of the fruit into alcohol and then distilling. The finished liquor contains about 50 per ct. alcohol. In European countries, peach-kernels are much used in flavoring a liquor called Eau de Noyau.