Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Meringue Pudding

A baked rice pudding topped with a lemon‑flavored meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice Meringue 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 rice base

  1. Combine 1 teacup of rice with 1 pint of water in a pot and bring to a boil until the water is absorbed.

  2. Add 1 pint of milk and a piece of butter the size of an egg to the rice.

  3. Beat the yolks of 4 eggs with ¾ teacup of sugar and the rind of 1 lemon.

  4. Mix the beaten yolk mixture with the rice.

Bake and top

  1. Butter a baking dish and pour the rice mixture into it.

  2. Bake lightly at 350°F (175°C).

  3. Beat the whites of 4 eggs with 1 teacup of powdered sugar and the juice of 1 lemon.

  4. Spread the meringue over the pudding once it is set and lightly browned.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  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

Rice
Forms the starchy body of the pudding as it absorbs liquid and softens.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, giving the pudding its soft, custard-like texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the pudding and help it set into a tender, creamy texture when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form the meringue, which gives a light, airy topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue become glossy and stable.

The step that matters

Spread the meringue only once the pudding is set and lightly browned. Meringue placed on a pudding that is still liquid will sink and weep. Setting the base first gives the topping a firm surface to rest on.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, egg, butter, 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, butter, 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.

You might also like

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