Name: Creme Aux Peches {Peach Cream}
Ingredients: 6 preserved peaches; ¼ cup sugar; glace cherries; ⅓ cup wine jelly; ½ pint cream; 1 oz. gelatine

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Creme Aux Peches {Peach Cream}

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mould

Mask a fancy jelly mould with a thin layer of jelly.
Decorate the sides and bottom with thin slices of peach and glace cherries.

Make the cream

Put the remaining peaches through a fine sieve and mix with about ¼ cup of syrup.
Dissolve the gelatine and heat the fruit pulp.
Strain the gelatine into the fruit pulp and add the sugar.
Whip the cream and fold it into the mixture as it begins to cool.
Pour the mixture into the decorated mould and place it on ice until set.

Serve

To serve, immerse the mould in slightly warm water, wipe it quickly, and turn it out onto a cold dish.
Garnish with chopped wine jelly and serve.

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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Peach + winetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together218 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,308 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Wine + creamtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,887 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Peach + creamtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together721 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine: Sets the cream so the mould holds its shape when turned out.
Cream: Adds richness and a light, airy texture when whipped and folded in.
Preserved peaches: Provide the main fruit flavour and body of the cream.
Sugar: Sweetens the fruit pulp and balances its acidity.

The step that matters

Fold the cream in as the mixture begins to cool. If the mixture is too warm, the cream will deflate and melt into it; if it has set too far, the cream will not blend evenly. Folding at the point of just beginning to thicken keeps the cream airy and evenly distributed.

Swap the peach

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

Vanillafits better
Strawberryfits better
Raspberryfits about as well
Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wine, cream. 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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Creme Aux Peches {Peach Cream}