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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A custard-like dessert made from rice, milk, sugar, eggs, lemon, and optional raisins, butter, bread crumbs, or peaches.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 933 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the rice custard

  1. Boil rice in a custard kettle with water and salt until dry.

  2. Dissolve corn starch in milk and add to the rice; boil again.

  3. Beat egg yolks with sugar, stir into the rice mixture, then add lemon juice and rind.

Bake and serve

  1. Place in a buttered dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) until set.

  2. Beat egg whites with sugar, spread over the top, and brown in the oven.

  3. Optionally, add raisins before baking or layer rice with butter, bread crumbs, and peaches before baking.

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 + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together933 recipes

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

  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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Absorbs the milk and water and forms the bulk of the pudding's body.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk so the pudding sets into a smooth, creamy texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set firm when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a meringue that browns on top.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue hold and brown.
Milk
Provides moisture and richness, softening the rice and forming the custard.

The step that matters

Beat egg yolks into the rice mixture gently. Adding hot egg yolks too quickly can scramble them into lumps. Stirring steadily while adding them keeps the custard smooth before it bakes and sets.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, corn, egg, sugar, lemon, butter):

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

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

More rice pudding recipes

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

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