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Dessert

Plain Rice Pudding

Rice pudding made with rice, milk, sugar, butter, and optional spices, baked until creamy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Plain Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Grease a pint dish well with butter.

  3. Wash the rice in two or three waters.

  4. Place the rice in the buttered dish and sprinkle with sugar.

  5. Fill the dish with milk.

  6. Optionally, grate nutmeg or sift cinnamon over the top.

Bake

  1. Bake in the oven for two hours, checking occasionally.

  2. As the rice absorbs the milk, add more milk as needed to keep the dish full.

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 + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Rice
Forms the body of the pudding as it absorbs milk and softens during baking.
Milk
Liquid that the rice absorbs, cooking it tender while creating a creamy texture.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like flavour while helping the top brown.
Butter
Greases the dish so the pudding does not stick and adds a little richness.

The step that matters

Keeping the dish full of milk. As the rice absorbs liquid, the top can dry out and the pudding can become dense or scorched. Topping up with milk keeps the rice moist and cooking evenly.

“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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