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Dessert

Iced Rice Pudding

A chilled rice pudding made with rice, milk, eggs, lemon, and sugar, topped with a beaten egg white mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Iced Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the rice in water until well cooked, then mash it smooth.

  2. Add milk, egg yolks, lemon rind, and 5 tablespoons of sugar to the rice.

  3. Cook over low heat, stirring until it thickens to a custard.

  4. Pour the custard into a shallow dish.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites with lemon juice and 6 tablespoons of sugar until light.

  2. Spread the egg white mixture over the custard and brown it in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

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

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Cooked and mashed, it thickens the pudding and gives it a soft, creamy body.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that sets into a creamy custard with the yolks.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set during gentle cooking, giving it richness.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar, they form a light meringue that puffs and browns on top.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue stay stable and browning.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Cook the custard over low heat. Egg yolks thicken at gentle temperatures; too much heat can scramble them, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth custard.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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