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Dessert

Whole Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding made with milk, rice, eggs, spices, lemon peel, butter, sugar, currants, and a puff pastry rim.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Whole Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a warm oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the rice

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the rice.

  3. Cook until the rice is soft, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, whisk the eggs.

  2. Add nutmeg, cinnamon, grated lemon peel, butter, and sugar to the rice and milk mixture.

  3. If desired, mix in the washed and pitted currants.

Bake

  1. Place a rim of puff pastry around the edge of a baking dish.

  2. Pour in the pudding mixture.

  3. Bake in a warm oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Softens as it cooks in milk, giving the pudding its body and bulk.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding a firm, custard-like structure.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to form the creamy base of the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavour of the eggs and milk.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Removing the pudding too early leaves it runny, while overbaking can make it grainy and curdled.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon, butter, 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.

More rice pudding recipes

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

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