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Dessert

Peach Pie

A pie filled with stewed peaches and topped with a whipped egg white frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 558 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Peach Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Peel and stone the peaches.

  2. Stew the peaches until soft.

  3. Mash the peaches smooth.

  4. Season the peaches to taste.

  5. Fill the pie crust with the peach mixture.

  6. Bake the pie until done.

Make and add the meringue topping

  1. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. Sweeten the whipped egg whites with powdered sugar.

  3. Flavor the frosting with vanilla.

  4. Spread the frosting over the pie.

  5. Bake the pie until the frosting is set.

  6. Serve cold.

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. Peach + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together558 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Ripe peaches
Provide the main fruit filling, which softens and thickens when stewed and mashed.
4 egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks to form a light, airy meringue-style topping.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the whipped egg whites and helps stabilize the meringue.
Pie crust
Holds the peach filling and forms the base of the pie.

The step that matters

Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped without any fat or yolk to reach stiff peaks; under-whipped or greasy whites will not hold air, so the topping will collapse or stay runny when baked.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Blueberryfits about as well
  3. Peachthe original
  4. Bananafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, vanilla. 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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