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Dessert

Peach Custard

A baked custard made with peaches, wine, eggs, and sugar, topped with whipped egg whites and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Peach Custard

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 peaches

  1. Combine peaches and wine in a saucepan.

  2. Add sugar to taste and stew until heated through.

  3. Optionally, line the pudding dish with macaroons or ladyfingers.

Make the custard

  1. Beat egg yolks with 1 cup of sugar until well combined.

  2. Grate in lemon peel.

  3. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  4. Fold half of the egg whites into the yolk mixture.

  5. Remove peaches from heat and pour into a pudding dish.

  6. Pour the yolk batter over the peaches.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

  2. Spread the remaining whipped egg whites over the top.

  3. Sweeten with powdered sugar and brown slightly.

  4. Serve cold with cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Peach + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness and a smooth, set texture.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the topping lightness and a airy, browned crust.
Peaches
Provide the fruit base and flavor that the custard is poured over.
Sugar
Sweetens the peaches and custard and helps the topping brown.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the yolk mixture. Folding gently keeps the whipped whites full of air. Stirring or deflating them makes the topping dense and flat instead of light.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, sugar, egg, lemon, cream. 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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