Why it works: Peach and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 947 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Peach Fritters
Ingredients
Directions
If using fresh peaches, peel, stone, and halve them.
Sprinkle sugar and grated lemon peel over the peaches and let them sit in a covered dish for 2 hours.
Prepare the batter for Fruit Fritters, substituting peach juice or syrup for milk.
Dip each peach half in the batter, ensuring they are well coated.
Fry the coated peaches in boiling fat until golden brown.
Remove with a wire spoon and place on brown paper in a warm oven.
Serve with powdered sugar or a fruit sauce.
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.
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Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together947 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,147 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,308 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Lemon + saucetop 30% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6,598 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Swap the lemon
The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peach, sugar, sauce):
- Vanillafits better
- Apricotfits better
- Plumfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against peach, sugar, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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