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Dessert

Baked Peach Pudding

A baked dessert of peaches topped on a batter of flour, butter, egg, milk, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 558 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Baked Peach Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Sift the flour with baking powder and salt.

  2. Rub in the butter until well combined.

  3. Beat the egg and mix it with the sweet milk.

  4. Stir the egg mixture into the prepared flour.

  5. Pour the batter into a buttered pan.

Top and bake

  1. Cover the batter with peaches.

  2. Add a drop of vanilla and a small piece of butter to each peach.

  3. Sprinkle with sugar and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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 + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together558 recipes

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

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the batter rises and becomes light.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the batter and on the peaches.
Peaches
Add moisture and fruity sweetness that soaks into the baked pudding.

The step that matters

Sprinkle with sugar and bake until golden. Baking until golden shows the surface has browned, which adds flavor. Underbaking leaves the batter wet and doughy in the center, while overbaking dries it out.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, egg, milk, vanilla, sugar):

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, milk, vanilla, 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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