Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Rice Custard
Ingredients
Directions
Make the rice mixture
Bring the milk to a boil.
Sift in the ground rice while stirring continuously.
Add sugar to taste and boil for a few minutes.
Bake and serve
Pour the mixture into cups and bake until set.
Let it cool before serving.
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.
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Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,202 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Coffee + ricetop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together181 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
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Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,344 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
- Ground rice
- Its starch thickens the hot milk and helps the pudding set as it bakes.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the rice starch thickens and sets into a custard-like texture.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps round out the flavor of the milk.
The step that matters
Sift the ground rice in while stirring continuously. Starch grains dropped into hot liquid without constant stirring clump together, leaving lumps. Stirring disperses each grain so the starch thickens the milk evenly.
“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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