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Dessert

Peach or Apple Pudding

A baked pudding made with peaches or apples, flour, milk, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Peach or Apple 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter a baking tin suitable for pies.

  3. Pare and slice enough peaches to fill the dish.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix 10 tablespoons of flour and ¼ teaspoon of salt.

  2. Add 1 pint of milk and 2 eggs to the flour mixture.

  3. Beat the egg whites separately and fold them into the batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter over the sliced peaches in the baking tin.

  2. Bake until golden brown and set. Serve warm.

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

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

  2. Peach + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter as its starches set during baking.
Eggs
Add structure and help the pudding set, and the whipped whites add lightness.
Milk
Provides moisture and liquid for the batter to bake into a soft custard-like set.
Peaches
Add fruit flavour and moisture that soaks into the batter as it bakes.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only when beaten to soft peaks and folded in gently; overmixing knocks out the air and leaves a dense pudding instead of a light, risen one.

Swap the peach

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

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

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