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Dessert

Peach Pudding

A baked dessert of stewed peaches, almonds, and a sweetened egg custard, finished with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 466 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Peach Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the peaches

  1. Peel and stone the peaches.

  2. In a pot, combine the peaches, white wine, and ¼ cup sugar; add the almonds.

  3. Stew until the peaches are tender and the wine has thickened into a syrup.

  4. Pour the mixture into a pudding pan.

Make the topping

  1. In a bowl, beat the yolks of the eggs with ½ cup sugar until light.

  2. Add the grated lemon rind and fold in half of the stiffened egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour this mixture over the peaches and bake at 350°F (175°C) until light brown.

  2. Cover with the remaining stiff egg whites mixed with 3 tablespoons sugar.

  3. Brown lightly again in the oven.

  4. Serve with 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.

  1. Peach + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

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 flavor and soft, moist body of the pudding.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the custard; whites, whipped, add lift and a light, airy topping.
White wine
Cooks down with sugar into a syrup that flavors and moistens the peaches.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.
Lemon rind
Adds a bright citrus aroma that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffened egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites, which lifts the mixture as it bakes. Stirring or deflating the whites makes the pudding dense and flat.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, white wine, egg, sugar, almond, cream. 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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