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Dessert

Vanilla Sauce

A baked rice pudding flavored with lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Vanilla Sauce

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.

Cook the rice

  1. Cook 1 pound of well-washed rice in 1 quart of water with a pinch of salt until half done.

  2. Add 1 pint of milk and simmer for 1 hour without stirring.

  3. While the rice is hot, stir in the butter and sugar until melted.

Finish and bake

  1. Beat the egg yolks and gradually add the milk, then stir into the rice mixture.

  2. Pour the pudding into two buttered pans and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch thickens as it cooks in the milk, giving the pudding body.
Butter
Fat adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and softens its texture as it melts into the rice.
Egg yolks
Proteins set during baking, giving the pudding a custard-like structure.
Milk
Supplies liquid and milk solids that thicken and lightly brown the pudding.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Beat the yolks and add the milk gradually before stirring into the rice. Adding warm liquid slowly keeps the yolks from scrambling into lumps, so the pudding stays smooth and evenly set.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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