Name: Peach Pie
Ingredients: sliced peaches; sugar; 3 or 4 peach kernels; 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

sliced peaches
sugar
3 or 4 peach kernels
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).
Prepare the pie crust as you would for an apple pie.

Fill and bake

Add enough sugar to the sliced peaches to taste.
Chop the peach kernels finely and sprinkle them over the peaches.
Cover with the top crust and bake for 30 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.

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

Sliced peaches: Provide the main fruit filling, releasing juice that moistens the filling as it bakes.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and draws moisture out of the peaches to help form the filling.
Pie crust: Forms the structure that holds the filling and browns as it bakes.
Peach kernels: Add a subtle almond-like aroma to the peach filling.

“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.