Why it works: Milk and rice 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
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the milk in a saucepan.
Add the rice and cook until tender.
Stir in the treacle and mix well.
Serve warm.
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.
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Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 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
- Starch that swells and softens as it cooks, thickening the milk into a creamy pudding.
- Milk
- Liquid that the rice absorbs as it cooks, giving the pudding its creamy body.
- Treacle
- Adds sweetness and a deep, rich flavour to the pudding.
The step that matters
Cook the rice until tender. Rice must simmer long enough for its starch to soften and absorb the milk. Stopping early leaves a firm, grainy texture, while cooking too long can scorch the milk on the base of the pan.
“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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