Name: Boiled Rice Pudding
Ingredients: ½ lb. of rice; 1½ cups of new milk; 2 oz. of butter; 4 eggs; ¼ teaspoon of salt; 4 large tablespoons of moist sugar; flavouring to taste (such as nutmeg, powdered cinnamon, grated lemon peel, essence of bitter almonds, or vanilla)

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Rice Pudding

Ingredients

½ lb. of rice
1½ cups of new milk
2 oz. of butter
4 eggs
¼ teaspoon of salt
4 large tablespoons of moist sugar
flavouring to taste (such as nutmeg, powdered cinnamon, grated lemon peel, essence of bitter almonds, or vanilla)

Directions

Prepare the rice

Gently stew the rice in the milk until tender.
Pour the rice into a basin and stir in the butter; let it cool.

Make the pudding

Beat the eggs and add them to the rice along with the sugar, salt, and any desired flavouring. Mix well and transfer the pudding to a buttered basin.
Tie it down with a cloth, plunge it into boiling water, and boil for 1 hour.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,779 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,685 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice: Softens in milk and forms the body of the pudding.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and set it as it cooks, giving a firm, custard-like texture.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother mouthfeel.
Milk: Cooks with the rice to create a creamy base.
Moist sugar: Sweetens the pudding and adds a light molasses flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding in a cloth. The pudding is sealed in a cloth and boiled in water, so it must be tied firmly to keep water out and the mixture cooking gently and evenly. Too vigorous a boil can break the cloth or make the texture coarse.

Swap the nutmeg

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegthe original
Turmericfits less well
Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, butter, egg, 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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Boiled Rice Pudding