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Dessert

Ground Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made with milk, eggs, ground rice, butter, lemon, and sugar.

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 ↓

Ground Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding base

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the ground rice and boil until it loses the raw taste.

  3. Remove from heat.

Finish and bake

  1. Stir in the butter, sugar, eggs, and lemon juice and rinds.

  2. If the mixture is not perfectly smooth, pass it through a sieve.

  3. Pour into a baking dish.

  4. Bake until set.

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. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the ground rice thickens as it boils.
Ground rice
Thickens the milk and gives the pudding its body once it is cooked.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding a custard-like structure.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel.
Lemons
Juice and rind add acidity and a bright aroma that cut the richness.

The step that matters

Boil the ground rice until it loses the raw taste. Ground rice starch only thickens fully when heated, and undercooked rice leaves a raw, floury flavour. Boiling long enough gelatinises the starch and cooks off that taste before the eggs are added.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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