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Dessert

Rice and Peach Pudding

A pudding made from boiled rice, eggs, sugar, milk, and peaches, baked in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice and Peach Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice in salted water until tender, shaking the kettle occasionally.

  2. Drain the rice and let it dry in a farina kettle.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs with sugar and milk.

  2. Mix the rice with the egg mixture using a fork to avoid mashing the grains.

Bake and serve

  1. In a buttered mold, layer rice and peaches evenly until all ingredients are used.

  2. Cover the mold and boil steadily for 1.5 hours.

  3. Turn out the pudding and serve with cream sauce.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

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

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

  4. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the pudding and gives it a tender, starchy body.
Eggs
Set when heated, binding the rice and milk into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds moisture-holding body to the pudding.
Milk
Provides liquid that forms the custard with the eggs and keeps the pudding moist.
Peaches
Add fruit sweetness and moisture between the layers of rice.

The step that matters

Boil steadily under a cover for 1.5 hours. Egg custards set through gentle, even heat. Boiling too hard or letting the water level drop can make the texture grainy or uneven, so the mold must stay covered and steadily simmering.

Swap the peach

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

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

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