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Dessert

Peach Pudding

A baked peach pudding with macaroons, egg yolk custard, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 947 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. 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 peaches

  1. Stew the peaches in wine and sugar until soft.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks with powdered sugar, lemon peel, and juice.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pudding dish with macaroons.

  2. Layer the stewed peaches in the dish, then pour in the beaten egg mixture.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until slightly browned.

Top and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, sweeten to taste, and spread over the pudding.

  2. Return to the oven until the top is light brown.

  3. 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. Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Peach + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Freestone peaches
Provide the main fruit flavor and soft, juicy body under the custard.
Egg yolks
Set the custard layer and give it richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that bakes into a light, browned meringue topping.
Macaroons
Form a crumbly, sweet base that soaks up some juices beneath the fruit.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the custard and dissolves smoothly into the egg yolks.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites hold air only when fully whipped and free of fat or yolk. Under-whipped or greasy whites will deflate and weep, so the topping will not rise or brown evenly.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, sugar, egg, lemon. 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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