Name: Peach Pie
Ingredients: mellow, juicy peaches; sugar; 1 tablespoon water; flour; pie crust

Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Peach Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fill

Wash the peaches and place them in a deep pie dish lined with pie crust.
Sprinkle a thick layer of sugar over each layer of peaches.
Add 1 tablespoon of water and sprinkle a little flour on top.

Bake

Cover with a thick crust and bake for 50 to 60 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.

Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,308 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Peach + flourtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together787 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 juice and flavor as they cook.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and draws moisture out of the peaches, forming syrup.
Flour: Thickens the juices released by the peaches as the pie bakes.
Pie crust: Forms the base and top that enclose the filling while it bakes.