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Dessert

Cream Peach Pie

A peach pie topped with a sweet cream made from milk, egg whites, sugar, and corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cream Peach Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pie

  1. Peel the peaches and remove the stones.

  2. Line your pie dish with pie crust.

  3. Fill the dish with the peaches and sprinkle with sugar.

  4. Lightly butter the lower crust where it contacts the filling.

  5. Bake the pie until done.

Make the cream

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk.

  2. Whip the egg whites.

  3. Stir the whipped egg whites into the heated milk.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of sugar and ½ teaspoon of corn-starch mixed with a little milk.

  5. Boil for 3 minutes, then let the cream cool.

Assemble and serve

  1. Lift the crust from the baked pie.

  2. Pour the cooled cream into the pie.

  3. Replace the crust.

  4. Let the pie 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. 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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Peach + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together94 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Peach + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe peaches
Provide the fruit flavor and juicy body of the filling.
Egg whites
Whipped into the milk, they add airy lightness and help the cream set when heated.
Rich milk
Forms the base of the cream, giving it richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Corn-starch
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving it body and a stable set.
Butter
Lightly coats the crust, adding fat that helps keep the crust from soaking up the filling.

The step that matters

Boil the cream after adding the cornstarch. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil, so boiling for the stated time sets the cream. Undercooked starch leaves it thin and runny.

Swap the peach

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

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

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