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
Peel, stone, and slice the peaches.
Line a pie plate with crust and add the sliced peaches.
Sprinkle sugar over the peaches based on their sweetness.
Add 3 chopped peach kernels to the pie.
Pour in a little water.
Bake
Cover with an upper crust or cross-bars of dough.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.
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.
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Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,308 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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 filling, along with their juices, flavor, and texture.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the peaches' tartness, while drawing out juice that thickens into syrup.
- Pie crust
- Holds the filling in shape and browns in the oven to form the golden exterior.
The step that matters
Sweeten the peaches to taste. Peaches vary in sweetness and acidity, so the sugar must be adjusted to the fruit. Sugar balances tartness and draws out juice, which affects both flavor and how runny the filling becomes when baked.
“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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