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Dessert

Rice and Peach Pudding

A pudding made from boiled rice, eggs, sugar, milk, and peaches, baked in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice and Peach Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the rice in plenty of salted water until tender, then drain and let it dry.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar and milk until light.

  3. Mix the rice into the egg mixture using a fork to avoid mashing the grains.

Assemble and cook

  1. In a buttered mold, layer rice and peaches evenly until all ingredients are used.

  2. Cover the mold and boil steadily for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Turn out the pudding and serve with cream 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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  3. Rice + peachtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk and body of the pudding, giving it a soft, tender structure.
Eggs
Set during cooking to bind the rice and custard into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its tender texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness that forms the custard around the rice.
Peaches
Add fruit sweetness and moisture between the layers of rice.

The step that matters

Mixing the rice into the egg mixture. Folding gently with a fork keeps the cooked rice grains intact. Mashing them releases starch and makes the pudding gummy and dense rather than light.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, egg, sugar, milk. 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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