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Dessert

Iced Rice Pudding

Chilled rice pudding served with orange compote and syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 558 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Iced Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

  1. Wash and parboil the rice.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the rice, milk, cream, sugar, and salt; let simmer until done, stirring occasionally.

  3. While hot, add the beaten egg yolks, stiffly beaten egg whites, and vanilla.

  4. Freeze the mixture like ice cream until well set, then place in a round mold and set in the freezer.

Make the orange compote

  1. Prepare the orange compote by separating the oranges into small sections and removing the white pith.

  2. In a saucepan, boil the orange sections in a syrup made of 1 lb. sugar and 1½ cups water for 2 minutes, then strain.

  3. Boil the syrup down to reduce its quantity, then add the curaçao and peach or apricot jam; mix well and pour over the oranges.

Serve

  1. To serve, turn the pudding out of the mold onto a serving dish, pile the orange compote on top and around the base, pour over the syrup, and serve.

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. Vanilla + peachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together558 recipes

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

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Starch that swells while simmering in milk, giving the pudding its body and creamy texture.
Milk
Liquid that cooks the rice and sets into a creamy custard base.
Cream
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer texture after freezing.
Eggs
Egg yolks and whites enrich and bind the custard and add structure as it sets.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps keep the frozen mixture from freezing rock hard.
Oranges
Provide bright acidity and fresh flavour to the compote served with the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the hot custard base and freezing it well. Egg yolks and whites must be added while the mixture is hot so they cook gently and thicken the base; then the mixture must be frozen until firm so it holds its shape when unmoulded.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

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

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