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Dessert

Imperial Pudding

A chilled rice pudding made with milk, sugar, wine or orange juice, gelatine, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Imperial Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice.

  2. Boil the rice in 1 quart of cold water until it begins to boil.

  3. Pour off all the water.

Make the pudding

  1. Add the pint of milk to the rice and place the mixture in a double boiler.

  2. Cook for 1 hour.

  3. Stir in the soaked gelatine, sugar, salt, and orange juice.

  4. Place the mixture in a basin of ice water.

  5. Stir until cold.

  6. Gently fold in the whipped cream.

  7. Pour the mixture into molds.

  8. Refrigerate to harden for about 1 hour.

Unmold and serve

  1. Dip the mold in warm water to loosen the pudding.

  2. Turn it out onto a large flat dish.

  3. Serve with strawberry sauce or plain.

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

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

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Milk + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (fenugreek, curry).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Rice
Provides the body and starch that thicken the pudding as it cooks in milk.
Milk
Supplies liquid and dairy richness that softens the rice and forms the custard base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavor of the milk and fruit.
Gelatine
Sets the chilled mixture so the pudding holds its shape when unmolded.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness, airy texture and fat for a creamy mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir until cold before folding in the whipped cream. Gelatine begins to set as it cools, so if the mixture is still warm the cream will deflate and the texture will be heavy. Chilling it until thickened but still pourable keeps the cream airy.

“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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