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Dessert

Plain Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding made with milk, sugar, raisins, and optional spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Plain 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Place the washed rice in a baking dish and cover with milk and salt.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake slowly for 30 minutes.

  2. After 30 minutes, add the sugar and stir gently.

  3. Continue to add hot milk until the mixture is soft and creamy.

  4. If desired, stir in the raisins and add nutmeg or lemon zest for flavor.

  5. Bake for an additional hour or until set.

  6. Serve cold.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

  4. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  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
Starch that softens and thickens the milk into a creamy pudding as it bakes.
Milk
Liquid that cooks with the rice, providing the body and creamy texture of the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to the pudding's flavor and browning at the surface.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and concentrated fruit flavor throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Adding the hot milk gradually. Rice absorbs liquid and starch thickens as it cooks; adding hot milk in stages keeps the mixture cooking evenly and lets the rice soften fully without scorching or drying out. Stopping too early leaves the texture firm.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

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