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Dessert

Meringue Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding topped with a sweet lemon meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Meringue 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 pudding

  1. Boil the rice soft in the milk.

  2. In a bowl, mix the cooked rice with the pint of milk, butter, egg yolks, and grated lemon rind.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for twenty minutes.

Make and add the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites to a strong froth.

  2. Add the white sugar and lemon juice to the froth.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pudding.

  4. Return the pudding to the oven to harden and brown lightly.

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
Cooked soft in milk, it forms the body and bulk of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped into a froth to form the light, airy meringue topping.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the rice and forms the creamy base.
White sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps it stabilise and brown.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavour to the meringue.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to a strong froth. Egg whites must be whipped until they hold stiff peaks so the meringue stays light and airy. Any trace of fat or yolk can stop them whipping, and under-whipped whites will weep or sink into the pudding.

Swap the lemon

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