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Dessert

Peach Tart

A baked tart of sliced peaches with sugar, flour, nutmeg, and butter in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Peach Tart

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.

Prepare

  1. Halve and peel the peaches.

  2. Line a pie dish with the pie crust.

Assemble

  1. Arrange the peaches cut side down in a single layer, close together.

  2. Mix the sugar, flour, and nutmeg; sprinkle over the peaches.

  3. Cut the butter into small pieces and scatter over the top.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 to 30 minutes, until the fruit is tender.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Peach + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Peach + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 main fruit flavor and juices that soften and sweeten during baking.
Pie crust
Forms the structure that holds the filling in the dish.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps draw out juices as it bakes.
Flour
Thickens the juices released by the peaches as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that enhances flavor and browning on top.

The step that matters

Arrange the peaches cut side down in a single layer. Packing the peaches closely in one layer lets them cook evenly and keeps the filling from becoming watery or uneven. Stacking them can leave some pieces undercooked while others break down.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Peachthe original

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