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Dessert

Peach Mousse

A chilled dessert made from ripe peaches, sugar, whipped cream, and optional sherry, set in ice and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Peach Mousse

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the peaches through a sieve.

  2. Mix the sieved peaches with sugar until smooth.

Make the mousse

  1. Fold in the whipped cream and sherry, if using.

  2. Pack the mixture into a mold.

Freeze

  1. Surround the mold with ice and salt, and let it stand for 4 to 5 hours.

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

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

  2. Peach + sherrytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together48 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  4. Cream + sherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 bulk of the mousse's base.
Sugar
Sweetens the peach purée and helps it stay smooth when chilled.
Whipped cream
Adds air and fat, giving the mousse its light, creamy texture.
Sherry
Adds a subtle aroma and a little acidity to the peach flavor.

The step that matters

Surround the mold with ice and salt. Salt lowers the melting point of the ice, so the surrounding brine gets colder than ice alone. This chills the mixture slowly and evenly enough to freeze without large ice crystals forming, keeping the mousse smooth.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, sherry. 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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