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Dessert

Peach Meringue Pies

A pie with stewed peaches topped with meringue, baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Peach Meringue Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Stew the canned peaches in their syrup until tender.

  2. Mash the stewed peaches until smooth.

  3. If using fresh peaches, crack the peach stones, mash the kernels, and stew them with the peaches for added flavor.

Assemble and bake the pie

  1. Prepare rich puff pastry in pie plates.

  2. Fill the pastry with the mashed peaches.

  3. Sprinkle enough sugar over the peaches to sweeten them.

  4. Bake until just done.

Make and bake the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth, adding 1 tablespoon of powdered sugar for each egg white.

  2. Continue beating until the meringue holds its shape.

  3. Spread the meringue over the baked peaches.

  4. Bake the meringue in the oven until well formed.

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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Peach + syruptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Peach + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,048 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into foam that sets into a light, airy meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the peach filling and helps stabilise the whipped egg white meringue.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the egg whites, helping the meringue become glossy and stable.
Canned peaches in syrup
Provide the fruit filling, with syrup adding moisture and sweetness as they stew.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to a stiff froth. Egg whites must be beaten until they hold stiff peaks; under-beaten whites collapse, and any trace of fat or yolk prevents them from foaming properly, so the meringue will not hold its shape in the oven.

Swap the peach

The recipe marks peach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, sugar, egg. 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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