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Peach Melba

A chilled custard dessert topped with peaches or pears and raspberry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and raspberry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 190 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Peach Melba

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Make custard by heating 1 pint of milk and whisking in 5 egg yolks and vanilla essence until thickened.

  2. Chill the custard in a freezer to make ice.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once frozen, place the ice in a deep dish.

  2. Top the ice with sliced peaches or pears.

  3. Mix raspberry jam with raspberry syrup until smooth.

  4. Pour the mixture over the fruit and ice.

  5. Serve immediately.

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 + raspberrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together190 recipes

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

  2. Vanilla + peachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together558 recipes

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

  3. Vanilla + raspberrytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together950 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  4. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard and add richness to the frozen base.
Raspberry jam
Adds sweetness and fruit flavour to the raspberry sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that is frozen into ice.

The step that matters

Thickening the custard. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently; if the custard boils or overheats, it can curdle or turn grainy. Stirring steadily over gentle heat keeps it smooth before it is chilled and frozen.

Swap the raspberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, vanilla, peach, syrup):

  1. Apricotfits about as well
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raspberrythe original
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, vanilla, peach, syrup. 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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