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Dessert

Ground Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from ground rice, milk, butter, sugar, cream, eggs, currants, and rose-water or wine and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Ground Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the ground rice in the milk with nutmeg or cinnamon, stirring constantly.

  2. Once boiled, pour into a pan and stir in the butter, powdered sugar, and cream.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

Add eggs and bake

  1. Beat the eggs, omitting the whites of four, and stir them into the cooled mixture alternately with the currants.

  2. Add the rose-water or mixed wine and brandy.

  3. Butter a deep dish, pour in the mixture, and bake until pale brown.

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 + buttertop 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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 as it boils, giving the pudding its body and set.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the custard and add richness and structure.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, tender texture and mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, making the pudding smoother and more velvety.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps browning on the surface during baking.
Dried currants
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit through the pudding.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Eggs added to very hot mixture can scramble or cook unevenly instead of blending smoothly. Cooling first lets the eggs incorporate evenly so the custard sets smooth when baked.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

More rice pudding recipes

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