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Dessert

Cocoanut and Rice Pudding

A custard pudding made with rice, milk, eggs, coconut, and sugar, topped with a meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,063 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cocoanut and Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. In a kettle, simmer rice in milk until very soft.

  2. Remove from heat and let cool.

Make the custard

  1. Beat 5 eggs, reserving 2 whites, and mix in sugar and grated coconut.

  2. Stir in the cooled rice and milk mixture.

  3. Bake in the oven until the custard forms, then remove immediately.

Top with meringue

  1. Make a meringue with the reserved egg whites and powdered sugar, beating until stiff.

  2. Spread the meringue on top and return to the oven for 2 minutes.

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. Rice + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar 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
Cooks down in milk to a very soft starch that thickens the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that sets with the eggs into a custard.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding its custard structure.
Egg whites
Whipped with powdered sugar to form a stable meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the meringue stay glossy.
Grated coconut
Adds coconut flavour and some richness and moisture to the custard.

The step that matters

Bake until the custard forms, then remove immediately. Egg proteins set with heat, and overbaking makes them tighten and weep or turn grainy, so the custard should be pulled as soon as it firms.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, 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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