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Dessert

Ground Rice Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, ground rice, eggs, butter, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Ground 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 base

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the ground rice and cook for 15 minutes.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Beat the eggs until light and mix them with the rice and milk.

  5. Add the butter and lemon juice.

Bake

  1. Pour into a baking dish and bake for 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).

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. Milk + ricetop 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice cooks in and sets into a creamy custard.
Ground rice
Thickens the milk as it cooks and gives the pudding its body.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding structure and a custard-like firmness.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, softer mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds a bright acidity that balances the sweetness and richness.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Hot rice mixture can scramble beaten eggs when they are added, leaving curdled specks instead of a smooth custard. Cooling the base first lets the eggs blend evenly and set gently in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, egg, butter. 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

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