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Dessert

Plain Dried Peach Pie

A pie made with dried peaches, sugar, butter, and pie crust, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Peach and butter work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 860 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Plain Dried Peach Pie

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.

Prepare the filling

  1. Pick over and wash the dried peaches.

  2. Add a little water and cook until soft.

  3. Stir in enough sugar to sweeten and let cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie tin with dough and fill with the peach mixture.

  2. Dot the top with butter.

  3. Cover with a top crust and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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 + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dried peaches
Provide the fruit flavor and the bulk of the filling once softened.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the dried fruit.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top crust brown as it bakes.
Pie crust
Forms the structure that holds the filling in the tin.

The step that matters

Let the peach filling cool before assembling. Hot filling melts the butter and softens the dough before baking, so the bottom crust can turn soggy and the pie can lose its structure.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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