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Dessert

Baked Rice Pudding

A baked dessert made with cooked rice, milk, eggs, sugar, lemon rind, and a frothy egg white frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk 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 ↓

Baked Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the pudding

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, combine the cooked rice, milk, eggs, sugar, and salt.

  3. Grate the lemon rind and add it to the mixture.

Make the frosting

  1. Squeeze the juice of the lemon into a separate bowl with the egg whites and 2 to 3 tablespoons of sugar.

  2. Beat the egg whites until frothy and set aside.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the rice mixture into a baking dish and bake for about 30-40 minutes until set.

  2. Spread the frothy egg white mixture on top and return to the oven until lightly browned.

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

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

  2. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Cooked rice
Forms the body of the pudding, giving it bulk and a soft, spoonable texture.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the custard, and their whites whip into the topping.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the eggs into a creamy custard around the rice.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the frosting whip and brown lightly.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until frothy. Whites must be whipped to a foam that holds air; under-whipped whites stay runny and won't form a light topping that browns evenly in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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