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Flan of Peaches

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Peach and red currant work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 33 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Flan of Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare a crust by making 1 pound of short paste.

  2. Grease a fluted circular or oval mold (2 inches high, 8 inches in diameter) with butter.

  3. Line the mold with the paste, cut the edges level, and pinch the top edges with pastry pincers.

  4. Fill the case with flour mixed with ⅙ pound of chopped suet and bake until three-quarters done.

  5. Remove the flour and brush the case clean.

  6. Fill the case with halves of peaches simmered in thin syrup for 5 minutes.

  7. Bake again for 15 minutes.

  8. Arrange a close row of peach halves on top, add a peach kernel to each, and pour jelly over the whole before serving.

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. Peach + red curranttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

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

  4. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + peachtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together787 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, peach, syrup):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, peach, syrup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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