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Dessert

Plain Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding made with rice, milk, sugar, vanilla, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Plain Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Scald the rice to remove the earthy taste.

  2. In a baking dish, combine the scalded rice, milk, salt, sugar, and vanilla.

  3. Dot the top with small pieces of butter.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 2 hours.

  2. Half an hour before it's done, pour over it ⅓ cup of cold milk to make it creamy.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Rice + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 softens and thickens the milk slowly during the long, gentle bake.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that becomes the creamy body of the pudding.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother mouthfeel and flavor.
Vanilla extract
Adds aroma that rounds out the flavor of the milk and sugar.

The step that matters

Bake in a slow oven at 300°F for 2 hours. Rice starch needs long, gentle heat to soften and thicken the milk evenly. A hotter oven can scorch the milk sugars and bottom of the dish before 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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