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Dessert

Baked Rice Pudding

A baked dessert made with rice, milk, eggs, sugar or molasses, spices, salt, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Baked Rice 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.

Prepare

  1. Swell the rice in milk or water, preferably milk.

  2. Once swelled, add the quart of milk, eggs, brown sugar or molasses, mace or cinnamon, salt, and cream.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

  2. If using unswelled rice in cold milk, bake for 3 hours.

  3. Optionally, add raisins if desired.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Rice + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together932 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Milk + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Absorbs liquid and swells, giving the pudding its body and soft texture.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding structure and a custard-like richness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice absorbs and the eggs set into.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the pudding richer and smoother in texture.
Brown sugar or molasses
Adds sweetness and deeper caramel-like flavor, and some color to the pudding.

The step that matters

Swell the rice before baking. Rice that has not swelled in milk takes up liquid slowly in the oven, which is why the record lists a much longer bake time of 3 hours. Soaking first lets the grains absorb liquid evenly so the pudding sets with a consistent texture.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

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