Skip to main content
Dessert

Peach Meringue Pudding

A dessert of peaches topped with meringue and a sweet almond‑flavored sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Peach and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 466 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Peach Meringue Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare the sauce by boiling a mixture and cooking for 3 minutes.

  2. Gradually pour the boiling mixture onto beaten eggs and sugar, then return to the boiler and cook for 4 minutes while stirring.

  3. Remove from heat, add salt, and let cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Heap the peaches in the center of a shallow dish.

  2. Beat egg whites to stiff peaks, then gradually add powdered sugar.

  3. Cover the peaches with the meringue.

  4. Place a board in the oven, put the dish on it, and cook until light brown.

Serve

  1. Season the sauce with almond extract and pour around the pudding before serving.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + almondtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks to form the airy meringue topping that sets and browns in the oven.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the meringue and dissolves into the whipped whites for a smoother, more stable foam.
Peaches
Provide fruit flavor and moisture beneath the meringue layer.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Whites under-whipped or greasy won't hold air, so the meringue can collapse or weep. Sugar added gradually helps the foam stay stable and glossy.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, almond. 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 recipesAlmond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipes