Why it works: Rice and milk match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 7,354 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: egg, milk, tree nuts, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Combine raisins and sherry; allow to stand 1 to 2 hours.
Make the pudding
In a saucepan, combine rice, 2 cups milk, sugar, butter, and salt.
Cook over medium heat until thickened, 20 to 25 minutes, stirring often.
Blend eggs with remaining 1 cup milk.
Add the egg mixture to the rice mixture; cook 2 minutes longer.
Stir in vanilla; chill.
Finish and serve
Add fruits, sherry, and nuts.
Spoon into individual dessert dishes.
Garnish with additional fruit, if desired.
This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.
Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Rice + milktop 3% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together7,354 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + buttertop 3% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together81,222 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
-
Cream + buttertop 3% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together41,494 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cream + sugartop 5% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together43,437 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sherry + milktop 6% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together1,479 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Thicken the custard and bind the pudding as they set with gentle heat.
- Rice
- Forms the body of the pudding and absorbs milk to become creamy and thick.
- Milk
- Provides the liquid that cooks with the rice into a creamy base.
- Raisins
- Add chewy texture and sweetness after soaking plumps them with sherry.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the cooked rice mixture.
The step that matters
Cook the egg mixture gently. Eggs can scramble if the mixture is too hot or cooked too fast. Cooking gently after adding the eggs lets the custard thicken smoothly instead of curdling.
Flavor stand-ins for the raisin
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sherry, rice, milk, sugar, butter, egg):
- Vanillabetter flavor fit
- Strawberrybetter flavor fit
- Coconutbetter flavor fit
- Raisinthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sherry, rice, milk, sugar, butter, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).
“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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