Name: To Make a Common Rice Pudding
Ingredients: ½ pound rice; 3 pints milk; ¼ pound butter; 1-2 sticks cinnamon, finely beaten; ½ nutmeg, grated; 1 egg, beaten; salt to taste; sugar to taste

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

To Make a Common Rice 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.

Prepare

Wash the rice thoroughly.

Mix

Combine the rice with the milk, butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, beaten egg, salt, and sugar in a large bowl, then mix well until all ingredients are combined.

Bake and serve

Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1.5 hours.
Once baked, remove the top and serve the pudding in breakfast cups, turning them out onto a hot dish.

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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,137 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice: Its starch softens and thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Milk: Forms the liquid base that the rice absorbs and that becomes the creamy custard.
Butter: Adds fat, which gives richness and a softer, smoother texture.
Egg: Sets with the heat of baking, binding the pudding and firming it into a custard.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps browning on the surface during baking.

The step that matters

Baking the pudding. The egg sets and the rice cooks slowly in the oven. Too much heat or too long can make the custard grainy or dry, so check that the centre is set and the rice is tender.

“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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To Make a Common Rice Pudding