Name: Dried Peach Pies
Ingredients: dried peaches; water; sugar; orange peel; pie crust

Why it works: Peach and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 385 recipes. Both carry pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Dried Peach Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

Stew the dried peaches in water until soft.
Add sugar and a little orange peel, then stew again.

Bake

Bake the mixture in a pie crust.

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.

Peach + orangetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together385 recipes

Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).
Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,308 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Dried peaches: Provide the main fruit flavour and body of the filling once softened.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the dried fruit.
Pie crust: Forms the container that holds the filling while it bakes.