Skip to main content
Dessert

Peaches with Rice

A dessert of cooked rice mixed with milk and sugar, topped with simmered peaches and syrup.

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

Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Peaches with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice thoroughly and boil it in salted water until almost done.

  2. Drain the rice and transfer it to a double boiler with the milk and sugar.

  3. Cook until the milk is absorbed.

Mold and rest

  1. Wet a mold with water and press the rice into it.

  2. Set aside for one hour.

Prepare the peaches and serve

  1. Peel and halve the peaches.

  2. Simmer them for ten minutes in a syrup made of sugar, water, and lemon juice.

  3. Turn the rice out onto a serving dish, arrange the peaches around it, and pour the syrup over everything.

  4. Serve ice cold.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  4. Rice + peachtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Starch that absorbs the milk and sets into a firm, sliceable shape when pressed and cooled.
Milk
Liquid that the rice absorbs, giving the pudding its creamy, soft texture.
Peaches
Fruit that adds juicy texture and fresh, mild sweetness against the rice.
Sugar
Sweetens the rice and the syrup, and helps form a glossy, flavourful syrup.

The step that matters

Cooking the rice in the milk. Rice must cook slowly in a double boiler so the milk is absorbed gently. High heat can scorch the milk and leave the rice unevenly cooked, and the rice needs to be fairly soft to hold its shape in the mold.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, sugar, peach, syrup. 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

Lemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipes