Skip to main content
Dessert

Peaches Served with Meringues

Peaches served with meringues.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Walnut and peach share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 82 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Peaches Served with Meringues

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gently mix in the castor sugar and chopped walnuts.

  3. Drop spoonfuls onto a baking sheet or use a piping bag to shape them.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in the oven until firm.

  2. Arrange canned peaches in a glass dish and top with meringues.

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. Walnut + peachtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + walnuttop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + walnuttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they give the meringues their light, airy structure.
Castor sugar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites and adds sweetness and a crisp, dry texture when baked.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavor that contrasts with the soft, sweet meringue.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped to a stable foam before the sugar is folded in. Under-whipped or greasy whites will not hold air, so the meringues will spread flat and turn out dense rather than light.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, peach):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, peach. 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.

You might also like

Peach Ice CreamPeach Ice Cream64 recipesPeach FrittersPeach Fritters55 recipesPeach MeringuePeach Meringue40 recipesPeach IcePeach Ice16 recipes