Skip to main content
Dessert

Poires a LA Solferino- -pears, Solferino Style

A French dessert of poached pears served over a vanilla‑flavored rice pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pear and vanilla 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 ↓

Poires a LA Solferino- -pears, Solferino Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Peel the pears.

  2. Halve the pears, removing the cores with a round vegetable scoop.

  3. Cook the pears with port wine and vanilla‑flavored syrup in a copper saucepan.

  4. Pour the mixture into a bowl.

  5. Set the bowl on ice to cool.

Make the rice

  1. Wash the rice.

  2. Parboil the rice in boiling water for 5 minutes.

  3. Drain the rice.

  4. Moisten the rice with milk and cream in a saucepan.

  5. Add butter, lemon peel, and vanilla to the rice.

  6. Cook the rice without stirring.

  7. Incorporate egg yolks into the rice.

  8. Incorporate powdered sugar into the rice.

Assemble and serve

  1. Dress the cold rice on a dish.

  2. Arrange the drained pears on top of the rice.

  3. Reduce the syrup on the fire if it is too thin.

  4. Decorate the rice and pears with whipped cream mixed with maraschino.

  5. Pour some syrup on the dish.

  6. Serve the remainder separately.

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. Pear + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together334 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the creamy base that holds the pears and sets as it cools.
Egg yolks
Enrich the rice and help it set into a thick, custard-like texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the rice.
Port wine
Flavors and colors the pears as they cook in the syrup.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the rice a softer, creamier texture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the rice and balances the tartness of the wine and lemon.

The step that matters

Cook the rice without stirring. Stirring while the rice cooks in milk and cream breaks down the starch and makes it gummy, so the base stays loose and uneven instead of creamy.

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, syrup, vanilla, rice, milk, cream, butter):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, syrup, vanilla, rice, milk, cream, 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.

You might also like

Lemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipes