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Dessert

Peach Sandwiches

A layered dessert of sponge cake, peaches, and whipped cream, glazed with sherry and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,437 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Peach Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Slice the sponge cake into ½ inch slices.

  2. Use a fancy cutter to stamp out twice as many round pieces as the number of servings.

  3. Melt the butter in a chafing dish and brown the sponge cake pieces.

  4. Remove the browned pieces to a platter and drain the peaches.

Make the peach sauce

  1. In the chafing dish, add the sugar, sherry, and grated orange peel to the melted butter.

  2. When hot, add the drained peaches and cook for 5 minutes.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place one round of sponge cake on a small plate.

  2. Top with half a peach.

  3. Add another round of sponge cake.

  4. Place another half peach on top.

  5. Dust with a pinch of cinnamon.

  6. Garnish with whipped cream.

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. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cinnamon + peachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Orange + peachtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together385 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sponge cake
Forms the base layers and soaks up butter and sherry as it browns.
Peaches
Provide moisture and fruity sweetness in the filling between cake rounds.
Butter
Browns the cake pieces and adds richness to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it thicken and caramelize slightly.
Whipped cream
Adds a light, cool, creamy finish on top of each sandwich.

The step that matters

Browning the sponge cake pieces. Cake pieces need an even golden brown in the melted butter. Too little heat leaves them pale and soggy, while too much browns the outside and dries the crumb.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, cream, peach, butter, sherry, wine, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, cream, peach, butter, sherry, wine, 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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