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Dessert

Peach Meringue Pie

A pie of stewed peaches topped with a sweet meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 Meringue Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Peel, stone, and stew the peaches until soft.

  2. Sweeten the peaches to taste.

  3. Line a pie plate with the pie crust.

  4. Fill the crust with the stewed peaches.

Bake and top

  1. Bake the pie until done.

  2. Remove the pie from the oven.

  3. Prepare the meringue by beating the egg whites until stiff, gradually adding the powdered sugar while continuing to beat.

  4. Spread the meringue over the pie.

  5. Return the pie to the oven until the meringue is delicately browned.

  6. Let the pie cool completely 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. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Peach + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,048 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Provide the fruit filling, which softens and becomes sweet when stewed.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the meringue topping and sets when baked.
Powdered sugar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites and sweetens the meringue.
Pie crust
Holds the stewed peach filling in the pie plate.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped until they hold firm peaks, and sugar must be added gradually, so the meringue stays stable and bakes into a light topping rather than weeping or collapsing.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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