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Dessert

Peach Meringue

A dessert of baked peaches topped with meringue and served with a custard made from egg yolks and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Peach Meringue

Why it works: Peach and milk 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 Meringue

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.

Bake the peaches

  1. Pare and quarter the peaches, removing the stones.

  2. Place the peaches in an oven-safe dish and sprinkle with sugar.

  3. Cover the peaches with beaten egg whites.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the egg whites are a delicate brown.

  5. Remove and cool, then refrigerate or place in a cool area.

Make the custard

  1. In a separate bowl, combine the egg yolks with milk, sweeten and flavor to taste.

  2. Cook the mixture in a custard kettle, stirring to prevent curdling.

Serve

  1. Once cool, pour the custard into a glass pitcher and serve with the meringue.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  2. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Peaches
Provide the main fruit flavor and moisture that the dish is built around.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that sets when baked, forming the meringue topping and its structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the egg white foam hold together while baking.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and gives it a smooth, creamy body.

The step that matters

Stirring the custard in the kettle. Egg proteins set and curdle when heated too quickly or left unstirred. Constant gentle stirring spreads the heat evenly so the custard thickens smoothly.

Swap the peach

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

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

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