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Boiled Rice Pudding

A boiled rice pudding served with preserved fruit and optional whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and strawberry share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Boiled Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Boil the rice in milk until tender.

Assemble and serve

  1. Drain the rice and place it in a pyramid shape on a flat platter.

  2. Surround the rice with your choice of preserved fruit.

  3. Pour the syrup from the preserves over the rice and fruit.

  4. Serve with whipped cream 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. Pear + strawberrytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + strawberrytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

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

  5. Milk + peartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together300 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 swells, giving the pudding its soft, tender body.
Milk
Cooks the rice into a creamy, tender base and adds richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the milk and fruit flavors.
Strawberry preserves
Adds sweetness, fruity acidity, and syrup that moistens the rice.

The step that matters

Boil the rice in milk until tender. Milk contains sugars and proteins that can scorch and stick to the bottom of the pot, and the rice needs enough liquid to soften fully. Stirring and watching the pot helps it cook evenly.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Pearthe original

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

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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