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Dessert

Rice Pudding

Rice pudding made with rice, milk, water, butter, sugar, sweet milk, flour, eggs, nutmeg, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the rice

  1. Cook the rice in 1 pint of milk and ½ pint of water with butter, salt, and sugar until tender.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

Make the custard

  1. Add sweet milk, flour, sugar, beaten eggs, and nutmeg to the cooled rice mixture.

  2. Pour into a baking dish and place it in a larger dish filled with water.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) until set.

  2. Serve with cream and additional sugar.

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.

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
Softens as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and chewy texture.
Eggs
Set when heated, giving the pudding its firm, custard-like structure.
Flour
Thickens the liquid and helps the pudding hold together as it sets.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that gives the pudding its moisture and creaminess.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the surface during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the flavour and texture of the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) in a water bath until set. Eggs coagulate at moderate heat. Baking slowly, with the dish surrounded by water, keeps the custard from overheating, which would make it curdle, weep, or turn rubbery.

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.

More rice pudding recipes

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