Skip to main content
Dessert

Ground Rice Pudding

A baked or boiled pudding made with sweet milk, ground rice, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and rice 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 ↓

Ground Rice Pudding

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.

Make the batter

  1. Bring 1 pint of milk to a boil with nutmeg and sugar.

  2. In the other pint of milk, mix the ground rice to form a thin batter.

  3. Strain the hot milk into the rice batter while stirring continuously.

  4. Add the whisked eggs and a sprinkling of salt, then mix well.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 70 minutes, or boil in a buttered basin.

  2. Serve with apricot preserve, marmalade, or any jam.

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 + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the milk into a set, creamy pudding body as it cooks.
Eggs
Add structure and richness so the pudding sets firm when baked.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice cooks in, giving the pudding its creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the baked surface.

The step that matters

Strain the hot milk into the rice batter while stirring continuously. Adding hot milk to the batter while stirring keeps the rice evenly dispersed, preventing lumps. Constant stirring also keeps the starch from settling and clumping before the pudding thickens.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipesRice PuddingRice Pudding22 recipes