Name: Peach Pie
Ingredients: Peaches; Sugar; Water; Pie crust

Why it works: Peach and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,308 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Peach Pie

Ingredients

Peaches
Sugar
Water
Pie crust

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).
Peel and halve the peaches.
Line a pie plate with the crust.

Fill and cover

Place the peach halves in the crust.
Sprinkle sugar liberally over the peaches and add a little water.
Cover with an upper crust or cross bars of dough.

Bake

Bake until golden brown.

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 + 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

Peaches: Provide the fruit filling, supplying flavor and juices that moisten the pie.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps draw juice from the peaches, forming a syrup, and aids browning.
Pie crust: Forms the structure that holds the filling and provides a flaky, golden base and top.

“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.