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Dessert

Peach Pie

A pie made with puff pastry crust and fresh peaches, topped with a meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,308 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Peach Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the crust

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line a pie tin with puff pastry.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the crust with the prepared peaches and cover them with sugar.

  2. Add the top crust or leave it open and bake until done.

  3. If using an open crust, remove from the oven and prepare the meringue.

Finish with meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and gradually add the powdered sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie and return it to the oven to brown slightly.

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Peach + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,048 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, crisp crust that holds the filling.
Fresh peaches
Provide the main fruit filling and its juice, which softens as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the peaches and draws out their juice.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to form a light, airy meringue topping.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the whipped egg whites to make the meringue stable and sweet.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped until they hold firm peaks, and sugar added gradually, so the foam stays stable. Under-whipped or greasy whites will weep or collapse in the oven, and the meringue will not brown evenly.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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