Name: Common Rice Pudding
Ingredients: ½ pound rice; 2 ounces beef suet, finely shredded; ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon; ¼ teaspoon grated lemon peel; 3 pints milk; ¼ teaspoon salt; sugar to taste

Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Common Rice Pudding

Ingredients

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

Wash the rice thoroughly.
Combine rice, beef suet, cinnamon, lemon peel, milk, salt, and sugar in a bowl. Stir well and pour into a deep dish.

Bake and serve

Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.
Remove from oven and serve using tea cups.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,137 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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: Forms the body of the pudding as it bakes and softens in the milk.
Milk: Provides the liquid that cooks the rice and sets into a creamy custard.
Beef suet: Adds fat that enriches the texture and moistens the pudding.