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Dessert

Flan of Peaches

A baked dessert of peaches in a pastry case with a currant jelly topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and red currant work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 33 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Flan of Peaches

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 case

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 °F (175 °C).

  2. Grease a fluted circular or oval mold (2 inches high, 8 inches in diameter) with butter.

  3. Line the mold with short pastry, cut the edges level, and pinch the edges with pastry pincers.

  4. Fill the case with flour mixed with chopped suet and bake until about three‑quarters done.

  5. Remove the flour and clean the case with a pastry brush.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the case with halved peaches that have been simmered in thin syrup for 5 minutes.

  2. Return the flan to the oven and bake for about 15 minutes.

  3. Arrange a close row of peach halves on top, placing a peach kernel on each piece.

  4. Pour jelly made from the red currant juice over the entire flan 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.

  1. Peach + red curranttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

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

  4. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + peachtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together787 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Short paste
Forms the crisp, sturdy case that holds the fruit.
Peaches
Provide the main fruit flavor and soft, juicy filling.
Red currant juice
Makes the jelly glaze that adds tartness and a glossy finish.
Suet
Adds fat to the flour filling used to bake the case blind.

The step that matters

Bake the case until three-quarters done. Partly baking the pastry before adding the peaches helps it stay crisp instead of soggy, since the moist fruit and later baking would otherwise soak into raw dough.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, peach, syrup. 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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