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Dessert

Peach Delight

A peach pie with biscuit crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Peach Delight

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel the peaches.

  2. Halve the peaches.

  3. Boil the pits in 1¼ cups of water for 10 minutes.

  4. Strain the water.

  5. Mix 1 cup of sugar with 2 tablespoons of flour thoroughly.

Assemble the pie

  1. In a deep baking dish, layer the peaches.

  2. Sprinkle some of the sugar mixture over the peaches.

  3. Add bits of butter.

  4. Repeat with a second layer of peaches.

  5. Sprinkle the remaining sugar mixture over the second layer.

  6. Pour the strained water over all.

Make and bake the crust

  1. Make a biscuit crust by mixing 1½ cups of flour, ½ teaspoon of salt, 3 tablespoons of sugar, and 1 teaspoon of baking powder.

  2. Add enough milk to form a soft dough.

  3. Roll the dough to ½ inch thick.

  4. Place the dough over the fruit.

  5. Cut several slits for steam to escape.

  6. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

Serve

  1. Cut the crust into pieces like pie.

  2. Place the fruit on top of the crust pieces.

  3. Pass with cream.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Peach + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Peaches
Provide the fruit filling, whose juices and flavour form the body of the pie.
Flour
Thickens the sugar and juices so the filling sets rather than running out.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and draws out juice from the peaches as it dissolves.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the biscuit crust rises and turns light.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that melts into the fruit, adding flavour and moistness.

The step that matters

Roll the dough to ½ inch thick. Dough that is too thin bakes dry and crisp before the fruit cooks, while thick dough can stay doughy in the centre. Even thickness helps the biscuit crust bake through and brown evenly.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter, milk, cream. 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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