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Sweet Vanilla Risotto with Poached Peaches & Chocolate

People in Britain have always had a bit of a soft spot in their hearts for rice pudding. However, the convenience and relative quality of tinned Ambrosia rice pudding has stopped a lot of people cooking the real thing. I thought it would be good to get you making this lovely old British dessert, but with a northern Italian twist – in the style of a risotto. Pudding rice and risotto rice are both plump, short-grain and starchy, so I thought it would be a good test to see if risotto rice would make great rice pudding – and it did. It has to be one of the best rice puddings I've ever made! It's lovely served with the peaches, but you could also use apricots, strawberries or rhubarb.

By jamieoliver · From Open Recipes · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 558 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 8

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By jamieoliver. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Peach + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together558 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Cinnamon + orangetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cinnamon + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  4. Vanilla + chocolatetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together10,018 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Cinnamon + ricetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peach, sugar, cinnamon, butter, vanilla, rice, white wine):

  1. Apricotbetter flavor fit
  2. Applebetter flavor fit
  3. Blackberrybetter flavor fit
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, sugar, cinnamon, butter, vanilla, rice, white wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).