Skip to main content
Dessert

Peach Surprise

A baked peach dessert with a creamy custard topping and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Peach Surprise

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Stir in the cornstarch mixed with a little cold milk.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the butter, egg yolks, and sugar until creamy.

Assemble and bake

  1. Drain the juice from the canned peaches and place the peaches in a baking dish.

  2. Cover the peaches with the milk mixture and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove from the oven, spread the beaten egg whites sweetened with powdered sugar on top, and return to the oven to brown.

  4. Serve with the sweetened peach 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

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

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that thickens and coats the peaches.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth, sliceable custard as it heats.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the custard, giving it a creamy texture.
Egg whites
Beaten into a foam, they form a light topping that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the topping brown.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier custard texture.

The step that matters

Spreading and browning the egg white topping. Beaten egg whites hold their foam only briefly, so spread them fully to the edges to seal the custard. Watch closely while browning, since the sugar darkens quickly.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Peach Ice CreamPeach Ice Cream64 recipesPeach FrittersPeach Fritters55 recipesPeach MeringuePeach Meringue40 recipesPeach IcePeach Ice16 recipes