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Dessert

Rice Plum Pudding

A baked rice pudding made with milk, butter, sugar, eggs, raisins or currants, cinnamon, rose water, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Rice Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice with lemon peel in the milk until soft.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the butter, sugar, and eggs.

  2. Dredge the fruit with flour and add it to the mixture along with the cinnamon.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 1½ hours.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Softens in milk to form the pudding's creamy, starchy body.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding structure and a custard-like texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth crumb.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the rice and forms the creamy base.
Raisins or currants
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as they heat, so the pudding needs enough time in the oven to firm up. Pulling it too early leaves a loose, runny centre, while overbaking can make the texture dry and grainy.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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