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Dessert

Peach Tart

A tart of stewed peaches with cream, served in puff pastry shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Peach Tart

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Peel and cut the peaches into small pieces, removing the stones.

  2. Crack half of the stones and blanch the kernels.

  3. Mix the blanched kernels with the peaches.

  4. Add enough sugar to the peaches to make them very sweet.

  5. Let the peaches sit until the sugar draws out the juice.

Cook the filling

  1. Stew the peaches without water until they are quite soft.

  2. Mash the peaches with the back of a spoon.

  3. Let the mashed peaches cool.

  4. Add cream to the stewed peaches.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake puff pastry shells until light brown.

  2. Fill the pastry shells with the mixture.

  3. Grate sugar over the filled tarts before serving.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Peach + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together721 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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 flavor and, once stewed and mashed, the body of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the peaches and draws out their juice, softening the fruit.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the stewed peach filling.
Puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky, golden shell that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Stew the peaches without water until quite soft. Peaches release their own juice as they heat. Stewing them slowly until soft concentrates the flavor and gives a smooth filling; if they are undercooked, the filling stays lumpy and watery, and it can soak into the pastry.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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