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Dessert

Meringue Peaches

A light meringue cake shaped like peaches, colored pink and green and glazed with fondant.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Meringue Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar together until light and thick, increasing to three times the original volume.

  2. Gradually add the lukewarm water while beating, with the baking soda dissolved in it.

  3. Stir in the flour just until it is no longer visible.

Shape and bake

  1. Bake on slightly buttered manila paper, running the batter from a lady-finger tube in lines almost touching to create an even sheet of cake.

  2. Press out the meringue from a kiss tube to imitate the shape of a peach.

Finish

  1. Color one side pink with a brush dipped in carmine and gloss over with hot fondant tinted slightly green.

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 + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Whipped into a foam that gives the batter its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Beaten with the eggs to help stabilize the foam and add sweetness.
Flour
Sets during baking to give the cake its firm, stable structure.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour just until it is no longer visible. Overmixing knocks the air out of the whipped egg foam, which makes the cake dense instead of light. Folding gently keeps the batter airy so it bakes up tender.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour. 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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