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Dessert

Peach Pudding

A baked dessert made with sliced peaches, buttered bread, milk, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Peach Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dish

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter a deep pudding dish thoroughly.

  3. Line the dish with well-buttered slices of baker's bread.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill the dish nearly full with sliced or canned peaches.

  2. Sweeten the peaches to taste.

  3. Cover the peaches with slices of bread soaked in milk for a minute or two.

  4. Place a plate on top and weigh it down.

  5. Bake for 1 to 1.5 hours if using canned peaches, or 2.5 hours if using raw peaches.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Baker's bread
Forms the layers that soak up the peach juices and set into a soft, custardy base.
Peaches
Provide the fruit filling and moisture that steams and softens during baking.
Milk
Soaks the top bread layer, adding moisture that helps it soften and brown lightly.
Butter
Greases the dish and coats the bread, encouraging gentle browning and preventing sticking.

The step that matters

Weighing down the top layer. Pressing the bread under a plate keeps it submerged in the juices and milk, so it soaks evenly instead of drying or burning on top during the long bake.

Swap the peach

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

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

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