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Dessert

Peach Liche Crema

A baked peach custard topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Peach Liche Crema

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.

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the cornstarch mixture.

  3. Cook until the mixture begins to thicken.

  4. Remove the saucepan from heat.

  5. Stir in the melted butter.

  6. Let the mixture cool to lukewarm.

  7. Whisk in the beaten egg yolks until the mixture is light.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the peaches in a dish.

  2. Sprinkle sugar over the peaches.

  3. Pour the creamy mixture over the peaches.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes.

  5. Spread a meringue made from the whipped egg whites and a little sugar on top.

  6. Return the dish to the oven until the meringue is light brown.

Serve

  1. 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

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

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Provide the fruit base, flavor, and juices that moisten the dish.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard, and whites whip into a meringue that sets and browns.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the light, browning meringue topping.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot milk mixture as it cooks, giving the custard body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, which thickens when heated with starch and egg.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the custard and meringue, and helps the whipped whites hold their structure.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture to lukewarm before whisking in the egg yolks. Adding yolks to a very hot mixture can scramble them into lumps. Cooling first lets the yolks blend smoothly and thicken the custard evenly without curdling.

Swap the peach

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

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

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