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Peach Pyramid

A dessert of peaches set in a clear syrup and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 947 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Peach Pyramid

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the peaches in half, peel, and remove the stones.

  2. Crack half the seeds and blanch the kernels.

Make the jelly

  1. Make a clear boiling syrup with 1 pound of sugar and add the peaches and kernels.

  2. Boil gently for 10 minutes, then remove half the peaches.

  3. Boil the remaining peaches for another 10 minutes, then remove all peaches and kernels.

  4. Mix the remaining syrup with the strained lemon juice and dissolved isinglass.

  5. Boil once, then fill a mold half full with this syrup.

Set in the mold

  1. Let it set, then add some peaches and a little more jelly.

  2. Once set, add the rest of the peaches and fill the mold with jelly.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 fruit flavor and the pieces suspended in the clear jelly.
White sugar
Sweetens the syrup and gives the jelly its body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the syrup.
Isinglass
Sets the syrup into a firm jelly as it cools.

The step that matters

Boil once, then fill the mold. Isinglass sets as the syrup cools, and repeated boiling can weaken its setting power, so the syrup should be boiled only once before it goes into the mold.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peach, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, sugar. 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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