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Dessert

Dutch Peach Shortcake

A peach shortcake made with a batter of egg, milk, butter, flour, baking powder, and topped with canned peaches and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Dutch Peach Shortcake

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg, salt, sweet milk, melted butter, flour, and baking powder until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a deep pie dish.

  2. Cover the batter with halves of canned peaches and sprinkle with sugar.

  3. Bake until golden brown.

Make the sauce

  1. To make the sauce, thicken peach juice with a little cornstarch over heat.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the shortcake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the batter.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter a soft, moist texture.
Cornstarch
Thickens the peach juice into a glossy sauce when heated.

The step that matters

Thicken peach juice with cornstarch over heat. Cornstarch must be heated with liquid to swell and thicken. If it is not brought to a simmer and stirred, the sauce stays thin or turns lumpy, since starch granules clump when added to hot liquid without being mixed first.

Swap the peach

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

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

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