Name: Peach Cobbler
Ingredients: 1 cup sour milk; 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda; 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder; ½ cup sugar; 5 tablespoons Mazola oil; Peaches; Additional sugar for sprinkling; Cinnamon for dusting

Why it works: Peach and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 625 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Peach Cobbler

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

In a bowl, mix sour milk, baking soda, baking powder, sugar, and Mazola oil until well combined.
Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the bottom of a pan to cover it.

Assemble and cook

Add a layer of peaches on top, then sprinkle with sugar and dust with cinnamon.
Add more dough by spoonfuls to cover the peaches.
Steam for 1 hour.

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 + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together625 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together781 recipes

Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Sour milk: Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce lift and a tender crumb.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that makes the batter rise.
Baking powder: Provides additional leavening so the topping rises and stays light.
Mazola oil: Adds fat that keeps the batter moist and tender.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the top brown and the peaches taste sweeter.