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Dessert

Rice Plum Pudding

A baked pudding made from soaked rice, sweet milk, sugar, butter, spices, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Soak the rice overnight, then drain it.

  2. Place the rice in a buttered pudding dish.

Mix and bake

  1. Add the sweet milk, salt, sugar, butter, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

  2. Stir in the raisins last.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 2 hours.

  4. Stir a few times during the first hour to prevent the rice and raisins from settling.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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 softens and absorbs the milk during baking.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the rice and sets into a creamy custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly at the surface.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the pudding.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir a few times during the first hour. Raisins and rice are denser than the milk, so they sink and settle to the bottom. Occasional stirring keeps them evenly distributed while the milk is still thin, so the pudding bakes uniformly rather than separating.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

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

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