Name: Rice Pudding
Ingredients: rice; butter; jelly; cream; sugar

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Boil some rice until tender.
Turn the rice into buttered cups and let it cool.
Once cold, turn the cups onto a platter.
Make a cavity in the top of each rice mound and fill it with jelly.
Serve with sweetened cream.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Rice + creamtop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,399 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).