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Dessert

Boiled Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding of rice cooked in milk, butter, eggs, and sugar, flavored with spices and optional fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Boiled Rice Pudding

6 persons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Stew the rice very gently in the milk until tender.

  2. Pour the cooked rice into a basin.

  3. Stir in the butter and let stand to cool.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, sugar, salt, and any chosen flavoring to the rice and stir well.

  3. Put the mixture into a buttered basin.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the basin down with a cloth.

  2. Plunge the basin into boiling water.

  3. Boil for 1¼ hour.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

294Calories
14 gProtein
14 gFat
28 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 8 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Cinnamon1 tsp ground (2.6g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Fruitnot in our table0
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.

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and cinnamon 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

Milk
Cooks the rice gently and forms the creamy, moist body of the pudding.
Eggs
Set when heated, giving the pudding its firm, custard-like structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly at the surface.

The step that matters

Plunge the basin into boiling water. The tied basin must sit in water that keeps boiling for the full time. Gentle, steady heat lets the egg custard set evenly; if the water stops boiling or the cloth is loose, the pudding can cook unevenly or turn watery.

“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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