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Dessert

Peach Pudding

A baked peach dessert with a custard layer, served cold with cream and pudding sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the peaches

  1. Boil 2 cups sugar with 1 cup water to make a syrup.

  2. Cook the peeled and halved peaches in the syrup as for canning, then drain them.

Assemble

  1. Layer crumbs in a baking dish, dot with butter, and add the peaches.

  2. Whisk ½ cup milk, 2 egg yolks, and 2 tbsp sugar together.

  3. Pour the custard over the layered peaches and crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with a meringue and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 15 minutes.

  2. Serve cold with cream and pudding sauce.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Peach + milktop 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

Peaches
Provide the main fruit flavor and the bulk of the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and the custard, and helps preserve the peaches.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they heat, giving the pudding a set, creamy body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding moisture and richness.
Crumbs
Soak up syrup and custard, giving the layers structure and body.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the crumb layer.

The step that matters

Bake the custard and meringue. Egg yolks set into a custard as they heat, but too much heat makes them curdle and turn grainy. Check the pudding near the end of baking and remove it once the custard is just set.

Swap the peach

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

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

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