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Dessert

A Boiled Rice Pudding

A boiled rice pudding made with ground rice, milk, sugar, butter, cream, lemon zest, eggs, nutmeg, and served warm with sweetened cream and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Leslie · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A Boiled Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Mix a quarter of a pound of ground rice with a pint of milk and simmer it over hot coals, stirring constantly to prevent lumps or burning at the bottom. When it is thick and smooth, take it off and pour it into an earthen pan.

  2. Mix a quarter of a pound of sugar and a quarter of a pound of butter with half a pint of cream or very rich milk, and stir it into the rice, adding powdered nutmeg and the grated rind of two lemons or half a teaspoonful of strong oil of lemon.

Add the eggs and boil

  1. Beat the yolks of six eggs with the whites of two eggs only. When the eggs are quite light, mix them gradually with the other ingredients and stir the whole very hard.

  2. Butter a large bowl or a pudding mould. Put in the mixture, tying a cloth tightly over the top so that no water can get in, and boil it for two hours.

Serve

  1. When done, turn it out into a dish. Serve it warm, and eat it with sweetened cream flavored with a glass of brandy or white wine and a grated nutmeg.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

659Calories
20 gProtein
32 gFat
75 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 8 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Rice1 cup cooked (158g) white206
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12

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

By Eliza Leslie. 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the milk into a soft, sliceable body as it cooks and sets.
Eggs
Add richness and help the pudding set firm when boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds body to the mixture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice swells and thickens in.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice while it simmers. Ground rice settles and scorches on the bottom of the pan and forms lumps if not stirred constantly, so the base turns grainy and burnt-tasting instead of smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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