Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓
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.
Bake the rice
Wash the rice and place it in a pudding dish.
Stir in the sugar and sprinkle with nutmeg.
Chop the butter and place it on top.
Add the milk and bake at 300°F (150°C) until the rice is well cooked.
Top and brown
Once done, whisk the egg whites until frothy, sweeten slightly, and flavor with nutmeg.
Spread the egg mixture on top and return to the oven to brown slightly.
Serve
Serve with whipped cream.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Rice + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,779 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together14,685 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Starch that softens in the milk and thickens, giving the pudding its body.
- Milk
- Provides the liquid the rice cooks in, forming a creamy base.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown.
- Butter
- Adds richness and moisture, rounding out the flavor.
- Egg whites
- Whipped into foam that sets into a light topping when heated.
The step that matters
Browning the egg white topping. Whipped egg whites set quickly with heat, so they need only a brief return to the oven. Overbaking can make the foam dry, tough and weepy.
Swap the nutmeg
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, sugar, milk, egg, butter):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegthe original
- Turmericfits less well
- Gingerfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sugar, milk, egg, butter. 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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