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Dessert

Rice Pudding

Rice pudding made with rice, milk, water, butter, sugar, flour, eggs, and nutmeg, baked and served with cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Cook one-fourth cupful rice in one pint milk and one-half pint water, with one tablespoonful butter, one-half teaspoon salt, one teaspoon sugar.

  2. When cooked and cold, add one pint sweet milk, one tablespoonful white flour, two tablespoonful sugar, two eggs well beaten, pinch nutmeg.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake slowly in dish setting in water.

  2. Serve with cream and sugar.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

1051Calories
32 gProtein
27 gFat
166 gCarbs

Counts 8 of 9 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 8 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Rice1 cup cooked (158g) white206
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

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. See the original page.

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

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

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Swells as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and bulk.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding a custard-like structure.
White flour
Thickens the mixture, helping it hold together as it bakes.
Milk
Provides liquid and richness, and its sugars brown gently in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake slowly in a water bath. Eggs set into a smooth custard when heated gently. Baking slowly in water keeps the oven heat moderate, so the eggs do not overcook, curdle or turn grainy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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