Name: Peach Meringue Pudding
Ingredients: 3 dozen ripe peaches; 1⅓ cups granulated sugar; 6 tablespoons powdered sugar; 1 quart milk; 3 teaspoons corn-starch; 6 eggs

Why it works: Peach and milk work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 781 recipes. Both carry phellandrene, which smells minty. The science ↓

Peach Meringue Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Boil 1 cup of granulated sugar with 1 pint of water.
Peel and quarter the peaches.
Add one-third of the peaches to the boiling syrup and simmer for 8 minutes.
Remove the peaches and repeat with the next third until all are cooked.
Boil the syrup until thick, then pour over the peaches and let cool.
Separate the egg whites and yolks, refrigerate the whites.
Beat the yolks with ⅓ cup of sugar.
In a double boiler, heat 1½ pints of milk.

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.

Peach + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together781 recipes

Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).
Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Peach + corntop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together94 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,308 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

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