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Dessert

Brown Rice

A baked pudding made from brown rice, butter, cream, and egg yolk, served with sugar, cream, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Brown Rice

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rice

  1. Rinse and wash the rice thoroughly.

  2. Place the rice in a bag and boil until soft.

  3. Transfer the rice to a deep dish and mash it finely with a potato masher.

Make the pudding

  1. While hot, mix in the butter, cream or milk, and salt to taste.

  2. Spread the mixture smoothly in a pudding dish.

  3. Beat the egg yolk and spread it over the rice with a knife.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a warm oven (about 400°F or 200°C) until it turns a fine brown color.

  2. Serve with sugar, cream, and a sprinkle of nutmeg.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  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
Forms the bulk of the pudding and, once mashed and cooked soft, gives it a thick, creamy body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Cream or rich milk
Contributes moisture and richness, softening the mashed rice into a custard-like texture.
Egg yolk
Enriches the top layer and helps it set and brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Baking until fine brown. The top needs enough oven heat to brown without drying out. Egg yolk proteins set and colour the surface, so removing the pudding too early leaves it pale and soft, while leaving it too long dries the rice.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, cream, 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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