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Dessert

A Common Rice Pudding

A sweet rice pudding made with rice, milk, sugar, eggs, and flavored with nutmeg, lemon rind, or cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Acton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 11 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 ↓

A Common Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Throw six ounces of rice into plenty of cold water, and boil it gently from eight to ten minutes.

  2. Drain it well in a sieve or strainer.

  3. Put it into a clean saucepan with a quart of milk.

  4. Let it stew until tender.

Finish and bake

  1. Sweeten it with three ounces of sugar.

  2. Stir it gradually, adding three large or four small eggs, beaten and strained.

  3. Add grated nutmeg, lemon rind, or cinnamon to give it flavour.

  4. Bake it one hour in a gentle oven.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

512Calories
19 gProtein
15 gFat
77 gCarbs

Counts 7 of 8 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Rice1 cup cooked (158g) white206
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Cinnamon1 tsp ground (2.6g)6
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 Eliza Acton. 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. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Provides the body of the pudding, softening and thickening as it stews in the milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice cooks in, giving the pudding its creamy moisture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavour of the milk and eggs.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding and give it a firmer, custard-like texture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the eggs. Adding beaten eggs gradually, while stirring, keeps them from curdling into lumps in the warm rice and milk, so the pudding bakes smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sugar, milk, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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