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Dessert

Rice Meringue Pudding

A baked rice pudding topped with a sweet meringue layer flavored with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Meringue Pudding

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.

Make the pudding base

  1. Boil the rice in the milk.

  2. Grate the lemon peel into the rice.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and mix them into the rice.

  4. Flavor with lemon extract.

Top with meringue and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  2. Mix the sugar into the beaten whites.

  3. Pour the meringue over the rice.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 20 to 30 minutes.

  5. Bake for an additional 10 minutes in a moderate oven.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooked in milk, it softens and thickens the pudding into a creamy body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the rice and forms the creamy custard base.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the pudding as they set during baking.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the light, set meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilize the beaten egg whites.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic citrus oils that flavor the pudding.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites into the meringue. Egg whites must be beaten to a stable foam with sugar mixed in; under-beaten or greasy whites will deflate and weep, and the topping will not stay light or brown evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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