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Creamy Custard with Peaches or Pears

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Creamy Custard with Peaches or Pears

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare the fruit by peeling and slicing peaches or pears.

  2. In a saucepan, combine milk, sugar, and Benson's Corn Starch.

  3. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract.

  5. Pour the custard over the prepared fruit and let it cool before serving.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

Sugar and vanilla 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

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, milk, sugar, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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