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Cream, Rice

A creamy rice dish made by cooking ground rice in milk or cream with flavoring, egg, and sweetener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cream, Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk or cream in a saucepan with your chosen flavoring for a few minutes.

  2. Mix the ground rice with a little of the milk, then gradually add the rest of the milk.

  3. Add the beaten egg and stir over gentle heat until thickened.

Finish and serve

  1. Sweeten to taste and serve in a glass dish with fruit tart or stewed fruit.

  2. Stir the cream until cold to prevent a skin from forming.

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 + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  2. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Ground rice
Swells in the hot milk and thickens the mixture into a creamy texture.
Egg
Sets with gentle heat and adds richness and body to the custard.
Milk or cream
Forms the base of the dish and provides moisture and richness.

The step that matters

Stir over gentle heat once the egg is added. Egg proteins set at high heat and can curdle or scramble, so gentle heat with constant stirring gives a smooth, thickened custard.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, 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.

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