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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A baked custard made with eggs, sugar, cooked rice, butter, cream, and nutmeg or lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

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 mixture

  1. Beat the eggs with the sugar.

  2. Gradually add the cooked rice and butter.

  3. Season with grated nutmeg or lemon.

  4. Stir in the cream or rich milk.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a dish and cover it.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until done, then remove immediately to prevent it from becoming watery.

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

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

  2. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and give the pudding its structure as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps keep it tender.
Cooked rice
Forms the body of the pudding, bulking out the custard.
Cream or rich milk
Adds liquid and richness, giving a softer, moister texture.

The step that matters

Removing the pudding from the oven on time. Eggs set as they heat, and held in the oven they keep cooking and release liquid, so the pudding turns watery. Taking it out once it is set keeps the custard smooth and firm.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

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

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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