Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Pears

Rice Pears are baked rice cakes shaped like pears, sweetened with orange jelly and served with custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 in the eggs and sweeten with 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 with sugar and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

  3. Insert an almond into each pear as a stalk.

Serve

  1. 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, it forms the soft body that holds the pear shape.
Eggs
Set when heated, binding the mixture and helping the coating turn firm and golden.
Orange jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity flavour, and its setting power helps thicken the mixture.
All-purpose flour
Forms the batter with egg that coats the pears and helps them brown.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to give a creamy, tender texture.

The step that matters

Shape the mixture into pear forms. The mixture must be thick enough to hold its shape. If it is too loose, the pears will spread or lose their form during dipping and baking.

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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipes