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Dessert

Baked Pear Pudding

A baked dessert of rice, pears, milk, sugar, and butter, topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Baked Pear Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Cook the rice

  1. Boil the rice in salted water until tender, then drain.

  2. Place the rice in a double boiler with the milk and cook until absorbed.

  3. Add the sugar and butter, stirring lightly with a fork until dissolved.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a mold and layer the rice and diced pears alternately, finishing with a layer of rice.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 25 minutes.

Serve

  1. Turn out onto a dish and garnish with whipped cream and pear leaves.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Milk + peartop 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
Cooked and absorbs the milk, forming the soft, tender body of the pudding.
Milk
Cooks into the rice, adding moisture and a creamy, custard-like texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps give it a tender, moist crumb.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, improving flavour and softness in the finished pudding.
Ripe pears
Provide fruity sweetness and moisture that flavour the layers as they bake.

The step that matters

Cooking the rice in the double boiler. Gentle, indirect heat lets the rice absorb the milk slowly without scorching or sticking to the pan. Rice that is undercooked stays firm, while overheating can make the milk split or burn, so the rice should be stirred and watched until the liquid is fully absorbed.

Swap the pear

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

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

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