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Dessert

Rice Pudding with Fruit

Rice pudding made with rice, milk, dried currants, egg, sugar, and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 Pudding with Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Combine the rice and milk in a stew-pan and heat gently without boiling.

  2. Once the rice has absorbed all the milk, stir in the dried currants and the beaten egg.

  3. Boil the mixture in a bag until the rice is tender.

Serve

  1. Serve the pudding with sugar and cream.

  2. Add more fruit if desired.

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 + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch absorbs the milk and softens, giving the pudding its body and creamy texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid the rice absorbs as it cooks, making the pudding creamy.
Dried currants
Add sweetness, chewy bite and fruity flavour throughout the pudding.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind and set the pudding as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten egg. Egg proteins set at moderate heat and can curdle or scramble if they meet a very hot mixture. Stir the egg in once the rice has absorbed the milk and the pudding is no longer boiling, so it blends smoothly and thickens evenly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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