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Dessert

Peach Pudding

A sweet pudding made from preserved peaches, water, sugar, and corn starch, served with cream and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Peach Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Pour the syrup from the preserved peaches into a quart bowl.

  2. Fill the bowl with hot water.

  3. Add sugar to the bowl to make it quite sweet.

  4. Transfer the mixture into a granite kettle.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Thicken and layer

  1. Wet 4 tablespoons of corn starch with water in a separate bowl.

  2. Add the corn starch mixture to the boiling kettle.

  3. Cook the mixture for 15 minutes.

  4. Layer some peaches in the mold.

  5. Pour some pudding over the peaches.

  6. Repeat layering and pouring until the mold is full.

  7. Set the mold aside to cool.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream.

  2. Sprinkle powdered sugar.

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

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

  2. Peach + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together94 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Peach + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together721 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the liquid into a sliceable pudding as it cooks and sets.
Preserved peaches
Supply the main fruit flavor and soft texture, along with their syrup for sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and balances the fruit's tartness.

The step that matters

Adding the corn starch mixture to the boiling kettle. Corn starch must be wet first and added to hot liquid while stirring, so it disperses evenly. Otherwise it clumps, and the pudding turns lumpy rather than smooth.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, corn, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, 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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