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Dessert

Gateaux of Peaches

A peach cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, butter, vanilla, cochineal, pistachios, and peach puree, finished with icing.

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 ↓

Gateaux of Peaches

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sponge

  1. Combine eggs and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Place the bowl over a pan of boiling water and whip until warm.

  3. Remove from heat and continue whipping until the mixture is almost stiff.

  4. Pass the peaches through a fine sieve.

  5. Add 2 tablespoons of puree to the mixture along with cochineal, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and flour.

  6. Gently fold in the flour mixture.

  7. Prepare a plain mold by brushing it with melted butter, coating it with caster sugar, and dusting it with flour.

  8. Pour the mixture into the mold and wrap a band of buttered paper around the outside.

  9. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for about 30 minutes.

Assemble and ice

  1. Remove from the mold and let cool.

  2. Cut into 1-inch thick slices.

  3. Spread the remaining peach puree thickly on the slices.

  4. Stack the slices.

  5. Prepare the icing.

  6. For the icing, mix 6 ounces icing sugar with 2 tablespoons liquid from the peaches and a little vanilla until warm and liquid.

  7. Pour the icing over the cake and quickly dust with finely chopped dried pistachios.

  8. Serve as a cake or with the remaining peaches and a little whipped cream around the base.

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. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Pistachio + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vanilla + pistachiotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Vanilla + nutstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped with sugar to trap air, giving the cake its light, airy structure.
Flour
Sets during baking to give the cake its structure once the whipped eggs are folded in.
Peaches
Puree adds moisture and fruity flavour to the sponge and the filling.
Butter
Greases the mold so the cake releases cleanly and browns lightly at the edges.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the whipped eggs.

The step that matters

Whipping the eggs and sugar. Whipping over warm water and then off the heat builds a stable foam. Overwhipping or deflating it while folding in the flour makes the sponge dense and flat.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, vanilla, pistachio, egg, flour, sugar, butter. 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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