Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Rice Pudding

A baked milk and rice pudding flavored with cinnamon and nutmeg, optionally with raisins or ginger.

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

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cream Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak the rice in the milk for half an hour.

  2. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Bake and serve

  1. If desired, add raisins or preserved ginger before baking.

  2. Bake slowly for about an hour, until the rice thickens the milk into a creamy substance.

  3. Serve warm with butter, maple sugar, or cream.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch thickens the milk as it bakes, giving the pudding a creamy body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice absorbs and slowly thickens into a custard-like texture.
Raisins or preserved ginger
Add chewy pieces and bursts of flavour through the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake slowly. Gentle, low heat lets the rice soften and release starch gradually, thickening the milk evenly without scorching or drying it out.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, rice, cinnamon, nutmeg, butter, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, cinnamon, nutmeg, 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

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipes