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Peach Layer Cake

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 558 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Peach Layer Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

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

  2. Beat the butter and caster sugar until creamy.

  3. Gradually stir in the 4 beaten eggs, alternating with half of the flour.

  4. Mix in the remaining flour and baking powder.

  5. Pour the batter into two greased layer cake pans and bake until firm and golden.

  6. Let the cakes cool on a rack.

  7. Whip the cream until stiff, then add 4 cups of caster sugar, the beaten egg white, and the crushed peaches.

  8. Flavor with vanilla and spread the mixture between the cake layers.

  9. Assemble the layers and ice the top with icing sugar mixed with water and lemon juice.

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 + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together558 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, cream, peach, sugar, vanilla):

  1. Blueberryfits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, cream, peach, sugar, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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