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Dessert

Peach Cakes

A dried peach confection made by mashing peaches, mixing with sugar, drying, shaping into cracker-sized cakes, and packing in sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,308 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Peach Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Peel the dry soft peaches and spread them on dishes.

  2. Mash the peaches until they are a pulp, but do not release the juice.

  3. Weigh the peaches and mix in the sugar.

  4. Spread the mixture on plates or dishes to dry.

Shape and dry

  1. Once dry enough to handle, shape into cakes the size and thickness of water crackers.

  2. Return the cakes to the dishes and turn them over every morning.

  3. When fully dry, pack them in sugar.

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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dry soft peaches
Provide the fruit base, with concentrated flavour and a pulpy body that holds the cakes together.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and, once packed on the outside, a coating that keeps the cakes from sticking.

The step that matters

Mashing without releasing the juice. The record says not to release the juice. Juice left in the pulp keeps the mixture wet, so it dries slowly and can spoil or stick instead of forming firm cakes.

“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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