Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Peach or Cherry Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Line a pie tin with a thick, rich crust.
Brush the crust with egg white to make it crisp.
Pinch an extra strip of crust around the edge and brush with egg white.
Sprinkle the entire crust with powdered sugar.
Add the fruit to the pie crust.
In a bowl, beat 3 eggs until light.
Mix in 2 tablespoons of sugar and 2 tablespoons of flour.
Pour the egg mixture over the fruit.
Sprinkle again with powdered sugar.
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.
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,308 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Flour + peachtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together787 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 peach
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Lemonfits better
- Peachthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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