Name: Rice Pudding
Ingredients: ½ pint rice; 1 piece butter (size of a goose egg); 1 grated nutmeg; 1 cup loaf sugar; 1 quart milk; 2 eggs

Why it works: Butter and milk 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

Prepare

Wash the rice well and boil it with very little water until it boils dry.

Make the pudding

Stir in the butter, nutmeg, sugar, milk, and beaten eggs.
Pour the mixture into a pudding dish and bake.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,779 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,685 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice: Forms the body of the pudding and thickens as it cooks in the milk.
Eggs: Set during baking to bind the pudding and give it a custard-like firmness.
Milk: Provides the liquid that cooks the rice and forms the creamy custard base.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the pudding.
Loaf sugar: Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown lightly in the oven.