Skip to main content
Dessert

Peach Pudding

A baked peach pudding made with flour, baking powder, lard or butter, salt, water, and peaches.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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 the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, salt, and lard or butter.

  2. Add water gradually to create a soft batter.

Assemble and cook

  1. Fill a deep pudding dish with the cut peaches.

  2. Pour the batter over the peaches.

  3. Cook on the stovetop for 30 minutes.

  4. Transfer to a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) and bake for another 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.

  1. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Flour + peachtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together787 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter as it sets around the fruit.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter so it bakes light rather than dense.
Lard or butter
Adds fat that tenderises the batter and contributes to a crumbly texture.
Cut peaches
Provide moisture and sweetness that soak into the batter as it bakes.

The step that matters

Adding water to the batter. Water should be added gradually so the batter forms a soft, pourable consistency. Adding too much at once can make it runny, which weakens the structure and stops the batter from rising well over the fruit.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter. 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.

More peach pudding recipes

Dried 14Rice 4 See all 96 →

You might also like

Peach Ice CreamPeach Ice Cream64 recipesPeach FrittersPeach Fritters55 recipesPeach MeringuePeach Meringue40 recipesPeach IcePeach Ice16 recipes