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Dessert

Peach Pie

A peach pie with a puff pastry crust and a meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Line a pie tin with puff pastry.

  2. Fill with peeled peaches, well covered with sugar.

Bake

  1. Add the upper crust and bake at 400°F (200°C) until done.

  2. Alternatively, bake without the upper crust until done.

Finish with meringue

  1. Remove from the oven and cover with a meringue made from beaten egg whites and powdered sugar.

  2. Return to the oven and brown slightly.

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Peach + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,048 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky crust that holds the peach filling.
Fresh peaches
Provide the fruit filling, its juices and most of the flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the peaches and draws out their juice as it sits.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that traps air and sets into a light meringue.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the meringue and dissolves smoothly into the whipped whites.

The step that matters

Browning the meringue. Sugar in the meringue browns quickly through caramelisation and browning reactions, so it can scorch in seconds. Watch it closely and stop once it is lightly golden.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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