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Iced Rice Pudding with a Compote of Oranges

A chilled rice pudding served with a sweet orange compote.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Iced Rice Pudding with a Compote of Oranges

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Rinse the rice in a towel and boil it in 1 quart of cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the rice and cover it with 1 quart of milk; boil for another 30 minutes.

  3. Whip the cream and add the whipped cream to the rice and milk mixture.

  4. Press the rice through a wire sieve back into the pot.

  5. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar, then pour over the boiling rice and stir well.

  6. Return to heat and cook for 2 minutes until it thickens, then remove from heat.

  7. Add the vanilla extract and let cool.

Freeze the pudding

  1. Freeze the mixture, then stir in the whipped cream and smooth it down.

  2. Pack in salt and ice for 2 hours.

Make the orange compote

  1. For the compote, boil 1 pound of sugar with 1 cup of water for 10 minutes, then skim.

  2. Add the lemon juice and prepare the oranges by peeling and cutting them in half.

  3. Remove the cores and place the orange halves in the hot syrup, then lay them out on a flat dish.

  4. Pour the remaining syrup over the oranges and cool on ice.

Serve

  1. To serve, remove the pudding from the ice, wipe the bottom with a towel dipped in boiling water, and turn it out onto a round dish.

  2. Heap the oranges on top and around the pudding, then pour the syrup over them and 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Vanilla + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

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

  4. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Rice
Starch that swells and softens during boiling, giving the pudding its body.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to create a creamy, tender base.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, making the frozen texture smooth and soft.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard when gently heated and add richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and lowers its freezing point for a softer texture.
Sweet oranges
Provide fresh, bright flavour and juicy sweetness in the compote.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg yolks into the rice. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble if the mixture is too hot or boils too long. Stirring well and cooking only briefly until it thickens keeps the base smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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