Skip to main content
Dessert

Baked Peaches

Peaches baked with nuts, water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Baked Peaches

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 ↓

Baked Peaches

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick 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. Pare the peaches and remove the stones, keeping them whole.

  3. Place the peaches in a baking dish.

  4. Fill the core spaces of the peaches with chopped nuts.

  5. Add ½ cup of water to the dish.

  6. Dust the peaches with 4 tablespoons of sugar.

Bake

  1. Bake for 20 minutes, until the peaches are soft but still whole.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Peach + nutstop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19 recipes

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

  3. Nuts + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Provide the main fruit, softening as they bake while keeping their shape.
Chopped nuts
Add crunch and a rich, toasty flavour in the hollowed peach cores.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the peach surfaces caramelise lightly as they bake.
Water
Creates steam and a little liquid in the dish so the peaches soften gently without drying.

The step that matters

Baking until soft but still whole. Peaches continue to soften with heat, so overbaking can collapse them. Checking at the stated time keeps them tender yet intact.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, 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.

You might also like

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