Why it works: Corn and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 933 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Rice Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the custard
In a saucepan, combine corn starch and milk; heat over medium heat.
Add beaten egg yolks and sugar, stirring until the mixture is hot.
Stir in boiled rice and continue stirring until thickened.
Remove from heat and add flavoring.
Pour the mixture into a pudding dish.
Top and bake
In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually add 2 tablespoons of sugar until stiff peaks form.
Spread the meringue over the pudding.
Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until the meringue is browned.
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.
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Corn + ricetop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together933 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Corn + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar 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
- Corn starch
- Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the pudding a smooth, set body.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich the custard and help it thicken into a creamy texture.
- Egg whites
- Whip into a foam that forms the meringue topping, which browns in the oven.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the starch and yolks thicken.
- Boiled rice
- Provides the body and chewy bulk of the pudding.
The step that matters
Stirring the custard until thickened. Corn starch thickens only when heated while stirred; stopping early leaves the pudding thin, and heating too fast can scorch the milk or curdle the egg yolks.
“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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