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Dessert

Rice Pudding, French, or Gateau De Biz

A baked rice pudding flavored with lemon rind, butter, eggs, and sweetened with sugar, served with cherries or jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Rice Pudding, French, or Gateau De Biz

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the rice

  1. Put the milk and lemon rind in a saucepan and let it infuse for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the lemon rind and add the washed and drained rice to the milk.

  3. Cook the rice over low heat until it swells.

Make the mixture

  1. Stir in the butter, salt, and sugar until sweetened.

  2. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs, then the beaten whites, mixing well.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a mold and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  2. Pour the rice mixture into the mold and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour.

  3. Turn out of the mold and garnish with preserved cherries or bright-colored jelly.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  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 + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  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
Swells as it cooks in milk, forming the body of the pudding.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to give the pudding its creamy, soft texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother, more tender crumb.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding and give it structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air and help lift the mixture; folding them in gently after the yolks keeps the pudding light rather than deflated.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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