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Rice and Peach Pudding

A baked peach pudding with a rice custard base, topped with meringue and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 466 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Rice and Peach Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Pare and cut the peaches in half, removing the stones.

  2. Simmer the sliced kernels in water for 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the kernels and add sugar to the liquid.

  4. Boil the liquid for 5 minutes.

  5. Once cooled, mix in lemon extract and sliced almonds.

Make the rice custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks until light.

  2. Add sugar, salt, butter, rice, and hot milk to the yolks, stirring until smooth.

  3. Place the peaches cut side up in a round baking dish.

  4. Fill the cavities with the almond mixture.

  5. Pour the rice custard around the peaches.

  6. Bake until the peaches are tender.

Top and brown

  1. Make a meringue by beating the egg whites with powdered sugar and lemon extract.

  2. Heap the meringue on top of the peaches.

  3. Dust the meringue with powdered sugar.

  4. Brown lightly in the oven.

Serve

  1. Serve very cold with sweetened whipped cream.

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. Peach + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Almond + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Butter + milktop 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. Peach + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

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 flavour and moisture, softening as they bake in the custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the rice custard and give it a rich, smooth set.
Egg whites
Form the meringue topping, which structures and lightly browns on top.
Hot steamed rice
Gives the custard body and a soft, creamy texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that sets with the eggs into a custard.
Sliced almonds
Add nutty aroma and a bit of crunch to the peach filling.

The step that matters

Bake until the peaches are tender, then brown the meringue lightly. Egg custard sets at moderate heat and can curdle or turn watery if overbaked, while meringue can scorch quickly. Watch the oven so the custard sets and the meringue only lightly browns.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, sugar, almond, egg, butter, rice, 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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