Name: Plain Rice Pudding
Ingredients: 1 cup rice; 3 teaspoons sugar; 8 cups whole milk; ½ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Rice and milk 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 ↓

Plain Rice Pudding

Ingredients

1 cup rice
3 teaspoons sugar
8 cups whole milk
½ teaspoon salt

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.

Prepare

Clean and wash the rice in several waters.

Bake and serve

Pour the milk into a deep baking dish.
Add the rice, sugar, and salt to the milk.
Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set, about 45 minutes.
Serve warm.

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.

Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

Sugar and milk 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: Its starch absorbs milk and swells, thickening the pudding and giving it body.
Whole milk: Provides the liquid and fat that make the pudding creamy and moist as it bakes.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.