Name: Peach Cobbler
Ingredients: 1 rich short cake crust (made with cream if possible); 2 quarts peeled and pitted peaches; 2 quarts sugar

Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Peach Cobbler

Ingredients

1 rich short cake crust (made with cream if possible)
2 quarts peeled and pitted peaches
2 quarts sugar

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Prepare a rich short cake crust using cream if possible.
Fill a baking dish halfway with the prepared peaches.
Add 2 quarts of sugar to the peaches and mix well.

Bake and serve

Cover the dish and bake for 1 hour or until the peaches are dark red.
Cool the cobbler and serve with sugar and 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.

Cream + sugartop 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).
Cream + peachtop 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 filling, moisture and most of the flavour.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and mixes with the peach juices to form a syrup.
Rich short cake crust: Forms the topping; its fat, especially from cream, gives a tender texture.