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Dessert

Rice Pudding with Eggs

A baked rice pudding made with milk, butter, sugar, lemon rind, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Rice Pudding with Eggs

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Cook the rice

  1. Cook the rice in the milk in a double boiler for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and let it sit for a few minutes.

Mix and bake

  1. Add the sugar, butter, lemon rind, and beaten eggs to the rice mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

  3. Bake for 30 minutes in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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
Its starch swells in the milk, thickening the pudding and giving it body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the rice and forms the creamy base of the pudding.
Eggs
Set during baking, giving the pudding a tender, custard-like structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the milk and eggs.
Butter
Adds fat, which contributes richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten eggs. If the rice mixture is still very hot when the eggs go in, the eggs can scramble and turn grainy instead of blending smoothly. Letting the mixture sit first lowers its temperature and helps keep the custard smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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