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 ↓
Kice Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the rice base
Boil the rice in the milk until soft.
Grate the lemon and mix the zest, egg yolks, and half the sugar with the hot rice.
Add the meringue and bake
Beat the egg whites with the lemon juice and the remaining sugar until stiff peaks form.
Fold the egg white mixture into the rice mixture gently.
Transfer to a buttered baking dish and bake until set.
Serve warm or chilled.
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 + lemontop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,366 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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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
- Cooked in milk until soft, it forms the thick body of the pudding.
- Milk
- Cooks with the rice to create the creamy liquid base of the pudding.
- Eggs
- Yolks thicken the pudding as it sets, while whites are whipped to add lightness.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.
- Butter
- Greases the baking dish and adds richness to the finished pudding.
The step that matters
Folding the egg whites into the rice mixture. Whipped egg whites hold air that gives lightness. Folding gently keeps that air in; vigorous stirring deflates the foam and leaves the pudding dense.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, sugar, egg, butter):
- Vanillafits better
- Coconutfits better
- Figfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, sugar, 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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