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Dessert

Ground Rice Cup Puddings

A small baked pudding made from ground rice, milk, lemon rind, butter, sugar, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Cup Puddings

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. Mix the ground rice smoothly with cold milk.

  2. Add boiling milk with lemon rind, butter, and sugar.

  3. Stir over heat until thickened.

  4. Once cooled, mix in the beaten eggs thoroughly.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into buttered cups or small molds.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 20 minutes.

  3. Serve immediately after baking, turned out onto a dish.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Starch thickens as it heats with the milk, giving the pudding its body.
Eggs
Proteins set during baking, firming the pudding into a sliceable structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and creamy moisture that the rice and eggs set within.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, smoother mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavour of the milk and eggs.
Lemon rind
Adds fragrant citrus aroma that lifts the flavour of the custard.

The step that matters

Mix in the beaten eggs after the base has cooled. Eggs added to a very hot mixture can scramble and turn grainy. Letting the base cool first lets the eggs blend smoothly, so they set evenly and gently in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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