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Dessert

Peach Pudding

A baked peach dessert with a creamy custard base and meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Peach Pudding

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.

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the corn starch and cook until thickened, then remove from heat.

  3. Add the melted butter and let it cool to lukewarm before mixing in the beaten egg yolks.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the sliced peaches in a baking dish and sprinkle with sugar.

  2. Pour the creamy mixture over the peaches.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes.

Top and serve

  1. Make a meringue with the egg whites and a little sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue over the top of the pudding.

  3. Brown the meringue.

  4. Serve cold with cream.

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. Peach + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  3. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Peach + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the custard and enrich it, while whites whip into the meringue topping.
Corn starch
Starch thickens the hot milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable custard.
Peaches
Fruit forms the base layer and adds sweetness and aroma under the custard.
Milk
Milk forms the creamy body of the custard once thickened with starch and egg.
Sugar
Sugar sweetens the peaches and helps the meringue brown and hold its structure.

The step that matters

Cool the butter mixture before adding the egg yolks. If the mixture is still hot when the beaten yolks go in, the eggs can scramble and turn lumpy instead of blending into a smooth custard.

Swap the peach

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

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

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

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