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Dessert

Peach Pudding

A baked peach dessert with a custard-like batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Peach Pudding

Ingredients

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

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

  2. Slice the peaches and place them in a small pudding dish.

  3. Sprinkle the peaches with half of the sugar.

Make and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg, remaining sugar, butter, milk, flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda until smooth.

  2. Pour the mixture over the peaches in the dish.

  3. Bake for 1 hour.

  4. Serve with vanilla sauce.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

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

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Release juice and sweetness that soak into the batter as it bakes, adding moisture and fruit flavor.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the batter.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets the pudding as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and works with baking soda to help it rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lightens the pudding.

The step that matters

Pour the batter over the peaches gently and bake for the full hour. The batter must rise and set around the fruit, and the baking soda and cream of tartar only lighten it once they have reacted in the oven. Pulling the dish early leaves a dense, wet centre.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, milk, flour, cream. 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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