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Dessert

Pook Man's Pudding

A sweet pudding made from milk, rice, sugar, butter, eggs, and flavored with lemon rind, oranges, or coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Sterrett, Laura C · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and tea work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 197 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Pook Man's Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Bake the pudding

  1. Bake three hours, and stir several times during the first hour.

  2. Bake until done, but do not allow it to become watery, and spread with a layer of jelly.

Top and brown

  1. Whip whites of eggs to a stiff froth with five tablespoons sugar and juice of one lemon, spread on top and brown.

Make the hard sauce

  1. Make a hard sauce for it as follows: One cup very light brown sugar, half cup butter, half the grated rind and the juice of one lemon; beat until very light. Vanilla may be used instead of the lemon.

Variations

  1. For coconut pudding, soak half cup desiccated coconut in boiling milk for half an hour or more, and add to the pudding, baking and finishing as above; or, for orange pudding, add a half dozen grated oranges.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

1113Calories
33 gProtein
27 gFat
184 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 9 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
Orange1 medium (131g)62
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

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

By Sterrett, Laura C. 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. Rice + teatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together197 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  5. Tea + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch thickens the milk as it bakes, giving the pudding a soft, creamy body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the rice absorbs and that gives the pudding its moisture.
Eggs
Set as they bake to bind the pudding, and whipped whites form a stiff, airy topping.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the meringue topping brown.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the hard sauce, making it smooth and tender.

The step that matters

Bake until done but not watery. Egg proteins set as the pudding bakes. Overbaking tightens them too far, so they squeeze out liquid and the texture turns watery or grainy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, bread, sugar, butter, tea, 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.

More rice pudding recipes

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

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