Name: Peach Pie. No. 2
Ingredients: 1 pie crust; 4-5 uncooked peaches; ¼ teaspoon nutmeg or cinnamon; ½ cup sugar

Why it works: Peach and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 342 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Peach Pie. No. 2

Ingredients

1 pie crust
4-5 uncooked peaches
¼ teaspoon nutmeg or cinnamon
½ cup sugar

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Pare and remove the stones from the peaches.

Assemble and bake

Arrange the peaches in a pie plate and sprinkle with nutmeg or cinnamon.
Cover the peaches with sugar.
Cut the pie crust into long strips and arrange them in a lattice pattern over the peaches.
Bake in the oven until the crust is golden brown.

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.

Peach + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together342 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,308 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Nutmeg + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together23,364 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Nutmeg and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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 main fruit filling, supplying flavor and juiciness as they cook.
Sugar: Sweetens the filling and draws out juices from the peaches.
Pie crust: Forms the pastry lattice that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.
Nutmeg or cinnamon: Adds warm aromatic spice that complements the peaches.