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Pears and Rice

A simple dish of pears cooked with rice, milk, sugar, butter, eggs, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Pears and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pick, wash, and drain the rice.

  2. Place the rice in a saucepan with 1 pint of milk, castor sugar, lemon rind, butter, and a pinch of salt.

  3. Cook until the rice is tender.

  4. Stir in the yolks of the eggs.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Pear + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together300 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch softens during cooking and thickens the milk into a creamy texture.
Milk
Forms the cooking liquid that the rice absorbs and turns into a creamy base.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the mixture and help it set into a richer, thicker texture.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavour of the milk and lemon.
Butter
Adds fat, which gives the dish a smoother mouthfeel and richer flavour.
Lemon rind
Its oils add a bright citrus aroma that lifts the flavour of the dish.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks. Yolks thicken when gently heated, but if they meet a very hot mixture they can scramble. Stir them in well, and keep the heat low so they blend smoothly into the creamy rice.

Swap the pear

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sugar, butter, milk, egg, lemon. 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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