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Baked Peaches

Peaches baked with cloves, sugar, water, and butter, served hot or cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Baked Peaches

Why it works: Peach and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 280 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Baked Peaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the peaches and stick 3 cloves into each peach.

  2. Place the peaches in a deep baking dish.

  3. Add ½ cup of water, 1 cup of sugar, and 1 heaping tablespoon of butter to the dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake slowly until the peaches are done.

  2. Serve either cold with cream or hot as an accompaniment to roast fowl or game.

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 + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Clove + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,045 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Clingstone peaches
Provide the fruit that softens and becomes tender and sweet as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the peaches and dissolves with the water into a syrup around the fruit.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding the flavor of the syrup and fruit.
Cloves
Add warm, spiced aroma that infuses the peaches as they bake.

The step that matters

Bake slowly until the peaches are done. Baking slowly lets the peaches soften through without collapsing. Peaches that are too firm stay tough, while overbaked ones fall apart and lose shape. Checking for tenderness keeps them intact.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, sugar, 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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