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Dessert

Peach Kuchen

A baked peach cake with meringue topping made from coffee cake dough, peaches, sugar, egg whites, and blanched almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 466 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Peach Kuchen

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 pans

  1. Grease cake pans thoroughly with clarified butter.

  2. Line the pans with rolled-out coffee cake dough and let it rise in a warm place.

Add the fruit

  1. Pare and quarter the peaches, then lay them in rows on the dough.

  2. Sweeten the peaches and bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

Make the meringue topping

  1. Quickly beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  2. Pound the blanched almonds and mix them with the egg whites.

  3. Pour the meringue over the cakes and bake until light brown.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Coffee + almondtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together374 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten into a foam, they trap air and set into a light, browning meringue topping.
Peaches
Add juicy moisture and fruity acidity that contrasts with the rich dough.
Sugar
Sweetens the peaches and adds flavour to the fruit.
Blanched almonds
Pounded into the meringue, they add body, texture and nutty flavour.
Coffee cake dough
Forms the rich, sturdy base that holds the fruit and topping.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites. Egg whites must be beaten quickly to a stiff foam, because air bubbles form the meringue's structure. Letting the whites stand or overbeating them makes the foam collapse or grainy, which weakens the topping.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, coffee, sugar, egg, almond. 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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