Name: Peach Custard
Ingredients: 1 cup sliced peaches; 1 cup green corn pulp; 1 cup water; Sugar to taste

Why it works: Peach and corn share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 94 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Peach Custard

Ingredients

1 cup sliced peaches
1 cup green corn pulp
1 cup water
Sugar to taste

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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the custard

In a baking dish, combine the sliced peaches, green corn pulp, and water.
Sweeten the mixture to your taste.

Bake

Bake for 20 minutes.

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.

Peach + corntop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together94 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,308 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,168 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Green corn pulp: Thickens the mixture and gives the custard its body as it bakes.
Sliced peaches: Provide fruit flavor and moisture to the custard.