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 ↓
Rice Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the pudding
Steam the rice in 3 cups of milk until soft.
Add 1 pint of milk, sweet cream (or butter), beaten egg yolks, and sugar.
Stir gently on the stove until boiling.
Transfer to an earthen dish.
Top and brown
Make a meringue with egg whites and powdered sugar, flavored with lemon extract.
Spread the meringue over the pudding and brown in the oven.
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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Rice + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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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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Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Softens into the body of the pudding, giving it its thick, tender texture.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the milk mixture as it heats, giving the pudding a rich, set custard body.
- Egg whites
- Whipped with powdered sugar to form the meringue that browns on top.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue brown in the oven.
The step that matters
Stir gently on the stove until boiling. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated or stirred too hard, so the mixture should be stirred gently and kept moving while it thickens.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, cream, egg, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Coconutfits better
- Figfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, cream, egg, 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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