Name: French Peaches
Ingredients: 12 peaches; 2 tablespoons sugar; 2 tablespoons maraschino; whipped cream; sweetener to taste; flavoring to taste

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

French Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

Peel, halve, and stone the peaches.
Sprinkle the peaches with sugar and maraschino.
Let the peaches stand until the sugar is absorbed.

Serve

Heap whipped cream in the center of a glass dish.
Arrange the peaches around the whipped cream.

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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,308 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Peach + creamtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together721 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Peaches: Provide the fruit base, with their juices softened and sweetened by the sugar and maraschino.
Sugar: Sweetens the peaches and draws out juice as it dissolves into them.
Maraschino: Adds a cherry-like aroma and a light liqueur flavor to the peaches.
Whipped cream: Adds richness and a cool, creamy contrast to the fruit.