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Dessert

Peach Cobblers

A baked peach dessert with dough-covered peaches and sugar, served with wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Cobblers

Ingredients

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

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, egg, butter, baking powder, salt, and enough milk to form a soft dough.

  3. Fill the cavities of the peach halves with sugar.

Wrap the peaches

  1. Roll out a small piece of dough.

  2. Place a peach in the center. Sprinkle with more sugar.

  3. Wrap the dough around the peach, pinching it closed at the top.

  4. Place the wrapped peaches in a deep pudding dish, repeating until the bottom is covered.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour boiling water into the dish until it is within ½ inch of the top of the cobblers.

  2. Sprinkle a heaping teaspoon of sugar over the top.

  3. Bake for about 30 minutes.

  4. Serve with wine sauce.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + peachtop 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. Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

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

  5. Flour + milktop 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the soft dough that wraps each peach.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the dough.
Baking powder
Produces gas that lifts the dough so it bakes light.
Peaches
Provide the fruit filling and its sweet, juicy flavour.

The step that matters

Pinching the dough closed around each peach. A poorly sealed dough wrap can let the sugary juices leak out during baking, leaving the cobblers dry and the filling thin.

Swap the peach

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

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

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