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Dessert

Rice Pudding Without Eggs

A baked rice pudding made with milk, rice, sugar, butter, lemon or almond extract, and salt, cooked slowly for 2½ hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Without Eggs

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice carefully.

Bake

  1. Combine the rice with the milk, sugar, butter, extract, and salt in a baking dish.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 2½ hours without stirring, allowing it to simmer.

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. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. 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
Softens as it absorbs milk and releases starch, thickening the pudding into a creamy body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the rice absorbs and that thickens into the creamy custard base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown gently during the long bake.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer mouthfeel.
Lemon or almond extract
Adds aroma and a background flavour that brightens the sweet milk.

The step that matters

Bake without stirring. A long, slow bake lets the rice soften and its starch thicken the milk gently. Stirring disturbs this set and can break up the rice, so the pudding is left undisturbed until done.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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