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Dessert

Pears, with Rice

A sweet dish of simmered rice with milk and sugar topped with stewed pears and thickened pear syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 334 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Pears, with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice in two or three waters.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the rice, milk, white sugar, and vanilla. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

Stew the pears

  1. Core and halve the pears. Stew them in 3 pints of water with 4 ounces of sugar and ¼ stick of vanilla until tender.

  2. Boil the syrup from the pears quickly for a few minutes to thicken.

Serve

  1. Turn the rice onto a hot dish and lay the stewed pears on top. Pour the thickened syrup over the rice.

  2. Serve hot or cold.

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. Vanilla + peartop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together334 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Rice + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Carolina rice
Starch that softens slowly in milk, giving the pudding its thick, creamy body.
Milk
Liquid that cooks into the rice, adding richness and a creamy texture.
Baking pears
Fruit that softens when stewed, becoming tender and sweet with a mild flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pear syrup thicken as it reduces.

The step that matters

Boil the pear syrup quickly. A brisk boil reduces the syrup and concentrates its sugar, so it thickens. A gentle simmer would leave it thin and watery over the rice.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Pearthe original

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