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Dessert

Peach Cobbler

A baked dessert of sliced peaches topped with a sweet batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Cobbler

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 the fruit

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

  2. Heat the sliced peaches in a pudding dish.

  3. Add small pieces of butter, white sugar, and a little water to the peaches.

Make the topping and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix sweet milk, melted butter, flour, and baking powder.

  2. Stir the mixture and spread it over the fruit.

  3. Bake until golden brown.

  4. Serve with cream and sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  3. Butter + flourtop 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).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter topping as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the topping so it bakes light rather than dense.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the topping brown and taste rich.
Sliced peaches
Provide the fruit base and juices that bake down beneath the topping.
White sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps it caramelise and thicken slightly in the juices.

The step that matters

Spread the topping over the fruit without stirring it in. The batter is meant to bake on top of the hot fruit, forming a crust over the juices. Stirring it into the fruit would mix the layers and change the texture of the finished cobbler.

Swap the peach

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

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

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