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Dessert

A Nice Rice Pudding

A sweet rice pudding made with rice, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon rind, and lemon juice, baked and topped with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

A Nice 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.

Cook the base

  1. Boil the rice in water until tender.

  2. Add milk, butter, sugar, egg yolks, and grated lemon rind, then mix well.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes or until set.

Make and brown the topping

  1. Beat egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. Gradually stir in ½ pint of sugar and lemon juice.

  3. After the pudding cools slightly, pour the egg white mixture over it.

  4. Brown in the oven.

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 + 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

Rice
Forms the body of the pudding as it cooks until tender.
Milk
Provides the liquid the rice absorbs and the eggs set within.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help it set into a soft, sliceable texture.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the topping lightness and an airy structure.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, smoother mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Pour the egg white mixture over the slightly cooled pudding. Whites spooned onto a very hot base can weep or deflate, while a slightly cooled base keeps the meringue topping stable enough to brown evenly in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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

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