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Dessert

Rice Pudding

Rice pudding is a sweet dish made with rice, sugar, raisins, butter, salt, and milk baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and bake

  1. In a large bowl, combine rice, sugar, raisins, butter, salt, and milk.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  3. Bake for 1.5 to 2 hours until set.

Serve

  1. Serve with sauce.

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. Butter + milktop 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 + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Provides the starchy body that thickens and sets the pudding as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly on the surface.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that cooks the rice and forms the creamy, custard-like texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and concentrated fruit flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Rice keeps absorbing liquid and the pudding firms as it cools, so underbaking leaves it loose and soupy while overbaking can dry it out. Check for a set centre rather than relying only on the timer.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

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