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Dessert

Fruit Rice Pudding

A sweet rice pudding with coconut and raisins, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,063 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Fruit Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the rice

  1. Combine rice and milk in a double boiler.

  2. Cook, stirring frequently, for 1½ hours.

Assemble and bake

  1. Transfer the cooked rice into a deep dish greased with butter.

  2. Add grated coconut and sugar to the rice mixture, adjusting sweetness as desired.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

  4. Serve warm.

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. Coconut + ricetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Milk + buttertop 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. Coconut + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Starch that thickens the milk into a creamy pudding as it cooks slowly.
Milk
Liquid that the rice absorbs and cooks in, forming the creamy base.
Grated coconut
Adds moisture, fat and a toasty flavor as the pudding bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Cooking the rice and milk slowly. Cooking gently over a double boiler and stirring often keeps milk from scorching on the bottom. The rice absorbs liquid and releases starch gradually, which gives a smooth, creamy texture.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coconut, rice, milk, 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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