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Dessert

Baked Peaches

Baked peaches are halved, filled with sugar, butter, cinnamon, baked, topped with meringue, and served hot or cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Baked Peaches

Why it works: Peach and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 625 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Baked Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Halve the peaches and remove the stones.

  3. Fill the inside of each peach with a mixture of sugar, butter, and cinnamon.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake the peaches.

  2. Baste them with a syrup made from lemon juice.

  3. Top with meringue.

  4. Brown in the oven before serving.

  5. Serve hot or cold.

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 + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Peach + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 soft, juicy fruit that forms the body of the dessert as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fruit and meringue brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the cinnamon flavour into the peach.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet fruit and syrup.
Egg white
Whipped into meringue, it forms a foam that sets and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Browning the meringue. Meringue sugar can go from golden to burnt in a short time. Too much heat or time can make it dark and bitter, and an under-whipped or overbaked meringue can weep or collapse. Watch it closely while it browns.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cinnamon, lemon, 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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