Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Pudding

A sweet baked rice pudding with milk, sugar, butter, nutmeg, wine, lemon peel, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Boil the rice in milk until tender.

  2. Mash the rice well with a wooden spoon.

Add flavourings and eggs

  1. Add sugar, melted butter, nutmeg, wine, and grated lemon peel.

  2. Beat the eggs separately, then stir them gently into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered deep dish and bake until golden brown.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  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. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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 and thickens as it cooks in milk.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the rice and makes a creamy base.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding structure and a custard-like firmness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Stir the eggs in gently. Eggs set when heated, so beating them too vigorously into the mixture can incorporate excess air and make the texture uneven after baking. Gentle stirring keeps the pudding smooth and evenly set.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, sugar, butter, egg, wine, lemon. 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.

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes