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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding made with rice, milk, eggs, sugar, lemon, and optional raisins or fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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.

Cook the rice

  1. Boil rice in water seasoned with salt until dry.

  2. Dissolve corn starch in milk.

  3. Add the corn starch mixture to the rice and boil again.

Enrich and flavour

  1. Beat egg yolks with sugar.

  2. Stir the beaten yolks into the rice mixture.

  3. Add lemon juice and rind.

Bake and top

  1. Place the mixture in a greased dish and bake at 300°F (150°C).

  2. Beat egg whites with sugar.

  3. Spread the beaten whites over the top of the baked pudding.

  4. Brown the whites in the oven.

  5. Optionally add raisins before baking.

  6. Optionally layer with peaches.

  7. Cover with remaining rice 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
Forms the bulk of the pudding and gives it a soft, starchy body as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, letting the rice and custard set softly.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid so the pudding holds its shape when cut.
Egg yolks
Set into the custard, adding richness and firm structure when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a light topping that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue topping brown.

The step that matters

Stirring in the yolks. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but if they meet very hot mixture unevenly they can scramble into lumps. Stir them in steadily so the custard sets smooth.

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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