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Dessert

Peach Pudding

A baked peach dessert with a custard-like batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Peach Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the peaches

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the peaches in a pudding dish and add cold water to half fill the dish.

  3. Cover the dish closely and bake until the peaches are almost done.

  4. Drain off the water and let the peaches cool.

Make and bake the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the milk, beaten eggs, flour, salt, melted butter, sugar (if using), and baking powder.

  2. Pour the batter over the cooled peaches.

  3. Bake until set and golden.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Peach + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Peach + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Set the batter into a custard-like texture as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it bakes into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that combines with eggs and flour to form the pudding.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter so it rises and becomes lighter.
Peaches
Supply the fruit flavour and moisture that the batter bakes over.

The step that matters

Drain the peaches and let them cool before adding the batter. Excess water left in the dish would dilute the batter and keep it from setting properly. Cooling the fruit prevents the hot peaches from partly cooking the eggs before baking.

Swap the peach

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

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

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