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Dessert

Peach Pie

A pastry pie filled with peaches and 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

  1. Line a pie tin with puff pastry.

  2. Fill with peaches and cover well with sugar.

Bake and finish

  1. Add the upper crust and bake at 400°F (200°C) until done.

  2. Alternatively, bake without the upper crust until done.

  3. Remove from the oven and cover with a meringue made from beaten egg whites and powdered sugar.

  4. Return to the oven and 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 a flaky, crisp crust that holds the filling.
Peaches
Provide the fruit filling and its juices, which soften during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the peaches and draws out their juices.
Egg whites
Whip into a meringue that sets and browns on top of the pie.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the beaten egg whites to make a stable, sweet meringue.

The step that matters

Returning the pie to brown the meringue. Meringue can weep, shrink or scorch quickly in the oven. A short, watched browning at moderate heat sets the topping and keeps it glossy without overcooking the crust beneath.

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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