Name: Peach Cobbler
Ingredients: 12 ripe peaches; 2 cups white sugar; ½ cup hot water; pie dough

Why it works: Peach and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,308 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Peach Cobbler

Ingredients

12 ripe peaches
2 cups white sugar
½ cup hot water
pie dough

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

Pare and slice the peaches, then sprinkle sugar over them on a plate.
Roll out the pie dough as you would for any pie and line a deep pie dish.

Assemble

Layer some peaches in the dish, followed by thin slices of dough, then another layer of peaches and dough until all ingredients are used.
Cover the top with crust.
Before baking, pour in ½ cup of hot water.

Bake and serve

Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until the crusts are golden and the peaches are tender.
Serve with 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.

Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

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 and its juices, which soften as they bake.
White sugar: Sweetens the peaches and helps draw out their juice as they sit.
Pie dough: Forms the crust that encloses the fruit and browns in the oven.

“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.