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Dessert

Red Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from red currant or raspberry juice and ground rice, served with cream or custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Red Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine the red currant or raspberry juice, wine, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Gradually add the ground rice mixed with a little cold water, stirring continuously.

  4. Cook until the mixture thickens and pulls away from the sides of the saucepan, about 10 minutes.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a damp mold and let it cool.

  2. Once cooled, turn the pudding out onto a glass dish and serve with cream or custard.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Red currant + winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together148 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Red currant + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together56 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Wine + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Wine + ricetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,223 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Starch that thickens the liquid and sets the pudding into a firm, sliceable shape as it cools.
Red currant or raspberry juice
Main liquid that gives the pudding its flavour and red colour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the fruit juice.
Wine
Adds depth of flavour and a little acidity to the juice base.

The step that matters

Adding the ground rice. Ground rice must be stirred in gradually and kept moving over heat, otherwise it clumps and cooks unevenly. Its starch swells and gelatinises as it heats, so thickening only happens smoothly when it is well dispersed.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, sugar, rice, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, sugar, rice, cream. 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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