Name: Dried Peach Pie
Ingredients: 2 cups dried peaches; ½ cup sweet cream; 1 cup sugar; 2 pie crusts; ½ cup boiling water; 2 tablespoons butter

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Dried Peach Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

Stew the dried peaches until perfectly soft.
Mash the peaches finely.
For two pies, add ½ cup sweet cream and 1 cup sugar, or omit the cream and add ½ cup boiling water.
Add butter the size of a hickory nut.

Bake

Bake with 2 crusts.

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.

Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Peach + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together860 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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

Dried peaches: Provide the fruit base, which softens and turns into the filling when stewed and mashed.
Sweet cream: Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the filling.
Sugar: Sweetens the filling and helps balance the tartness of the fruit.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, giving the filling a rounder flavor.