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Dessert

Baked Peaches

Peaches baked with sugar, butter, cinnamon, lemon syrup, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Baked Peaches

Why it works: Peach and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 625 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Baked Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and bake

  1. Remove the stones from the peaches and fill the cavity with a mixture of sugar, butter, and cinnamon.

  2. Bake the peaches slowly at 300°F (150°C), basting with a syrup made from lemon juice and sugar.

  3. Once tender, cover the peaches with meringue made from whipped egg whites.

Finish and serve

  1. Brown the meringue and serve the peaches hot or cold.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Peaches
Provide the main fruit body that softens and turns tender during slow baking.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms a light meringue topping which browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries the cinnamon and sugar filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and syrup, and helps the basting syrup caramelise slightly as it reduces.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet syrup and balances the peaches.

The step that matters

Bake slowly and baste. Baking at a low temperature softens the peaches gently without drying them out. Regular basting keeps the surface moist so the syrup can build flavour instead of scorching.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, cinnamon, lemon, syrup, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cinnamon, lemon, syrup, 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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