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Rice and Potato Pudding

A baked pudding made from rice, potatoes, milk, sugar, suet, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 851 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Rice and Potato Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the rice base

  1. Prepare the rice as in Baked Rice Pudding.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the rice, milk, sugar, and salt; boil for one hour, adding water if too dry.

Add the potatoes and suet

  1. Boil the potatoes, peel, and mash them; add to the rice mixture.

  2. Chop the suet and mix it into the whole mixture.

Bake

  1. Butter a baking dish, pour the mixture in, and bake at 400°F (200°C) for thirty minutes.

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 + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

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

  3. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

  5. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

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
Forms the bulk of the pudding and thickens as it cooks in the milk.
Milk
Provides liquid that the rice absorbs, giving a soft, creamy body.
Potatoes
Mashed starch that adds body and a dense, smooth texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture brown lightly in the oven.
Suet
Adds fat that enriches the texture and richness of the pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling the rice mixture with milk. The rice must simmer long enough to soften and absorb the milk, and adding water when it looks dry prevents scorching on the base of the pan. Milk scorches easily, so gentle, steady heat matters.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, 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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