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Dessert

Peach Cakes

Peach cakes are baked cakes made with eggs, sugar, flour, and topped with peach jam and icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and the yolks separately.

  2. Mix the beaten yolks with the sugar and beat together for 15 minutes.

  3. Gradually add the flour, then fold in the beaten egg whites and mix for 4-5 minutes.

  4. Drop spoonfuls of batter onto a buttered and floured baking tin, shaping them like peach halves.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 10 minutes until light brown.

  2. Spread peach jam on the flat side of each cake and sandwich them together.

  3. Cover the outside with a thin coat of icing and brush one side with cochineal water when dry.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  4. Flour + peachtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together787 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites give the cakes their light, airy structure, while yolks add richness and colour.
Pulverized sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the yolks beat to a smooth, thick texture.
Fine flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the cakes' structure as they bake.
Peach jam
Adds sweetness, fruit flavour and moisture between the two halves.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites are whipped to hold air; overmixing or stirring vigorously deflates them, so the cakes bake up dense instead of light and springy.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. 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.

“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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