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Rice Border with Prunes

A sweet rice pudding flavored with lemon rind, Maraschino liqueur, and apricot marmalade, topped with prunes, pistachios, and cherries.

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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the rice

  1. Simmer the rice in the milk until tender.

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

  3. Stir in the egg yolks and Maraschino liqueur.

Bake

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

  2. Place the mold in a baking tin and surround it with boiling water.

  3. Bake for about 30 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

Finish and serve

  1. Dilute the apricot marmalade with a little water, sweeten to taste, and strain over the cooled rice.

  2. Sprinkle the prepared pistachios on top.

  3. Stew the plums or prunes, remove the stones, and press them back together with a strip of angelica to represent a stalk.

  4. Pile the plums in the center of the rice and garnish with halved cherries and whipped cream using a piping bag.

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
Cooks down in the milk to a soft, thick body that forms the base of the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the rice absorbs and simmers in, giving the pudding its moisture.
Egg yolks
Set during baking to bind the rice and give the pudding a firm, sliceable structure.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the texture of the pudding.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, softer mouthfeel to the pudding.
French plums or prunes
Supply soft, sweet fruit flavour and form the showy centrepiece of the dish.

The step that matters

Bake in a water bath. Egg yolks set gently at moderate heat. Surrounding the mold with boiling water keeps the temperature even, so the custard-like mixture stays smooth instead of curdling or turning rubbery.

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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