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Dessert

To Boil Rice

A sweet rice pudding made with rice, water, milk, sugar, butter, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Boil Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice to remove excess flour.

  2. Add enough water to a pot to start boiling the rice.

Cook the pudding

  1. Once boiling, gradually add milk while cooking slowly for nearly an hour.

  2. Just before finishing, stir in the sugar and butter.

  3. Beat the egg and mix it in just before serving.

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. Milk + buttertop 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 + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + walnuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch thickens slowly as it simmers in milk, giving the pudding its body.
Milk
Slow simmering with the rice gives the pudding its creamy, moist texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding taste rounded.
Egg
Mixed in near the end, it adds richness and helps lightly set the pudding.

The step that matters

Adding the milk gradually while cooking slowly. Adding milk gradually and simmering gently keeps the rice from scorching or sticking and lets the starch release slowly, so the pudding thickens evenly into a creamy texture.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Peanutfits about as well
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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

More rice pudding recipes

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