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Dessert

Peaches haJced

Halved peaches baked skin side down on buttered bread slices, dusted with sugar and topped with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Peaches haJced

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the peaches

  1. Cut the peaches in half.

  2. Remove the stones from the peaches.

Assemble

  1. Place slices of bread in a buttered baking pan.

  2. Place the peach halves skin side down on the bread.

  3. Dust the peaches with sugar.

  4. Place a piece of butter on each peach half.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until cooked.

  2. Serve warm with any juice or a little syrup of pears.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Peach + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Soften as they bake and release juice that flavours the bread and pan.
Bread
Forms a base that soaks up peach juice and butter as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the peaches and bread brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the peach surfaces caramelise lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until the peaches are just cooked. A slow oven cooks the fruit gently. Baking too long dries the peaches and can toughen the bread, while too little time leaves the fruit firm and raw-tasting.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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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