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Dessert

Peach Custard Pie

A pie filled with peach custard topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and peach work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 781 recipes. Both carry phellandrene, which smells minty. The science ↓

Peach Custard 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 the crust

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line a pie plate with the pie crust and bake the crust until golden.

Make the custard

  1. In a double boiler, heat 1 cup of milk.

  2. In a bowl, mix the yolks of 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons of sugar, and 1 tablespoon of flour.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the boiling milk and stir until it thickens.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill the baked pie crust with canned peaches.

  2. Pour the custard over the peaches.

  3. Make a meringue by beating the whites of 2 eggs with 2 tablespoons of sugar until stiff.

  4. Spoon the meringue over the pie and brown it in the oven.

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 + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set when heated, giving it a rich body.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff meringue that gives structure and browns on top.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the yolks thicken.
Flour
Stabilizes the custard so it thickens smoothly and holds its shape when cut.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and meringue and helps the whites hold their stiff peaks.
Canned peaches
Provide the fruit layer and sweet, moist flavor under the custard.

The step that matters

Stirring the custard as it thickens. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated, so the custard must be stirred constantly over gentle heat until it thickens. The flour in the mixture helps stabilize it against curdling.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, 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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