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Rice Pears

Rice Pears are rice cakes shaped like pears, made with rice, milk, eggs, orange jelly, flour, and sugar, garnished with an almond and served custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rice Pears

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the rice mixture

  1. Boil the rice in milk until tender.

  2. Mix the cooked rice with eggs and orange jelly until thick.

  3. Shape the mixture into pear forms.

Coat and bake

  1. Dip each pear in a batter made of egg and flour.

  2. Sprinkle sugar on the pears.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden brown.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish each pear with an almond and serve with custard.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  3. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooked in milk and bound with eggs, it gives the pears their soft, starchy body.
Eggs
Bind the rice mixture and set during baking, holding the pear shapes together.
Milk
Cooks the rice until tender and adds moisture and richness to the mixture.
Flour
Combined with egg in the batter, it forms a coating that browns in the oven.
Orange jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity aroma, and helps the mixture thicken when combined with the rice.

The step that matters

Mixing the cooked rice with eggs and orange jelly until thick. The mixture must be thick enough to hold a pear shape. Eggs set when heated, so the mixture should be firm before shaping, or the pears may lose their form in the batter and oven.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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