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Dessert

Rice Border with Prunes

A sweet rice dessert with prunes, pistachios, and apricot marmalade glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Rice Border with Prunes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Simmer the rice in the milk until tender.

  2. Add the lemon rind and sugar, and let it sit uncovered for a short time to evaporate some moisture.

  3. Stir in the egg yolks and Maraschino.

Bake and finish

  1. Press the mixture into a well-buttered border mold.

  2. Place the mold in a tin surrounded by boiling water.

  3. Bake for about 1 hour.

  4. Dilute the apricot marmalade with a little water, sweeten to taste, and strain over the dish.

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. Plum + apricottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  3. Rice + pistachiotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together140 recipes

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

  4. Pistachio + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together188 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Carolina rice
Cooked until tender, it forms the starchy body that holds the border's shape.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as they set, giving the border a soft, custard-like structure.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to create a creamy, tender base and adds moisture to the set border.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the base and adds moisture-binding sweetness to the mixture.
Apricot marmalade
Adds fruit sweetness and a glossy finish when thinned and strained over the dish.

The step that matters

Press the mixture into a well-buttered border mold. Greasing the mold thoroughly lets the set rice and egg mixture release cleanly so the border keeps its shape when turned out.

Swap the pistachio

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (plum, rice, sugar, milk, cream, egg, apricot):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Pistachiothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, rice, sugar, milk, cream, egg, apricot. 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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