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Cocoanut Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from rice cooked in coconut milk, sweetened with jaggery or treacle and flavored with aniseed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,063 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cocoanut Rice 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 in cold water until soft.

  2. Scrape the coconut and extract the milk with hot water.

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the rice in the coconut milk.

  2. Sweeten with date jaggery or treacle and add aniseed.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

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

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. Rice + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Coconut + datetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together151 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Rice + datetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122 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
Softens and absorbs liquid as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and thick texture.
Coconut milk
Adds fat and moisture, making the pudding rich and creamy as it cooks.
Date jaggery or treacle
Provides sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavour.
Aniseed
Adds a light aromatic, liquorice-like flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling the rice in the coconut milk. Rice starch thickens as the grains absorb liquid, so the mixture can stick and scorch on the base of the pan if it is not stirred and kept at a gentle simmer.

Swap the date

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, coconut, butter):

  1. Mangofits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Datethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, coconut, butter. 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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