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Dessert

Cream Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from milk, rice, sugar, nutmeg, raisins, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Cream Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk, rice, sugar, nutmeg, and raisins.

  2. Stir frequently and cook until it begins to thicken.

  3. If it thickens too much, add more milk.

  4. Once the rice is tender, stir in the cream and remove from heat.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch swells and softens as it cooks, thickening the milk into a creamy pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice absorbs and cooks in, giving the pudding its body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavour of the milk and nutmeg.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the finished pudding a smoother, silkier texture.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Cooking the rice in the milk. Milk scorches easily on the bottom of a pan, and starch can stick and burn. Stirring frequently and keeping the heat gentle lets the rice soften evenly and the milk thicken smoothly without catching.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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

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