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Rice Meringue

A custard-like rice pudding topped with a browned meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Meringue

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks with ½ cup of sugar.

  2. Add the mixture to the milk and rice.

  3. Cook until thick like soft custard.

  4. Remove from heat and add grated lemon rind.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour into a buttered pudding dish.

  2. Spread the well-beaten egg whites mixed with the remaining sugar and lemon juice on top.

  3. Brown in the oven.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled rice
Adds body and bulk, soaking up the milk to give the custard a soft, thick texture.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard as they set with heat; whites whipped into a foam form the airy topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, which thickens as the egg proteins set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the beaten egg whites hold a stable foam.
Lemon
Rind adds fragrant aroma and juice adds a bright acidity that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook until thick like soft custard. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with heat. Stop cooking too early and the custard stays runny; heat too hard or too long and the eggs can scramble and turn grainy.

Swap the lemon

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