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Dessert

Whole Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding made with whole rice, milk, butter, eggs, lemon rind, spices, and optional currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the rice base

  1. Boil the rice in 2½ cups of milk until tender, stirring occasionally.

  2. Add the butter and sugar to taste.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl, then mix in 1 cup of milk, lemon rind, nutmeg, cinnamon, and currants if using.

  2. Combine the egg mixture with the rice mixture.

Bake

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

  2. Pour the rice mixture into the dish and bake 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 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

Whole rice
Softens as it cooks in milk, giving the pudding its body and bulk.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the pudding into a firm, sliceable custard.
Milk
Provides liquid that cooks the rice and forms the creamy custard base.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and smooth texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves the custard runny, while overbaking can make it curdled or rubbery, so the pudding should be baked only until just set.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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