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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A baked dessert made from rice, milk, butter, sugar, lemon, vanilla, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

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.

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice in milk until soft, then cool.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter, sugar, and egg yolks together.

  2. Add the lemon juice, vanilla, and cooled rice to the mixture.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve with or without sauce.

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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Vanilla + ricetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Rice
Softened in milk, it gives the pudding its body and bulk.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth texture to the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the creamed butter become light.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and whites lift the batter, then set it as it bakes.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Beaten whites trap air that gives the pudding its lift. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, leaving a denser, flatter result.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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