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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A sweet baked rice pudding made with butter, sugar, milk, eggs, mixed spice, rose water, and optional currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice and boil it until very soft.

  2. Drain the rice and let it cool.

Make the custard base

  1. In a pan, combine the butter and sugar, stirring until very light.

  2. Add the mixed spice and rose water to the butter and sugar mixture.

  3. Beat the eggs until light, then gradually stir them into the milk.

  4. Stir the egg and milk mixture into the butter and sugar with the cooled rice.

  5. Optionally, stir in floured currants or raisins before baking.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the mixture and grate nutmeg over the top.

  2. Serve cold or at room temperature.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the pudding and gives it a soft, tender body.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding its structure and custard-like texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the texture and carrying the spices.
Milk
Provides liquid that bakes into a creamy, tender custard around the rice.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, creamed with butter, helps make the mixture light.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs until light before adding the milk. Beating incorporates air and loosens the eggs so they blend evenly into the milk. Adding them gradually prevents lumps and uneven setting during baking.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

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