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Dessert

Rice and Apricot Pudding

A baked pudding made with rice, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, and preserved apricots, topped with custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Rice and Apricot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice and drain it.

  2. Halve the preserved apricots and simmer them in a little thin syrup for 5 minutes, then drain.

  3. Butter a pudding mold and sprinkle bread crumbs over the butter.

Cook the rice

  1. In a saucepan, combine the rice, boiling milk, butter, and sugar. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

  2. Once partially cooled, stir in the beaten eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Layer the rice in the mold, about 1 inch thick, then add pieces of apricot. Continue layering with rice and fruit.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 1 hour.

  3. Carefully turn out the pudding and serve with 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Milk + apricottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the pudding and sets into a tender, creamy body as it absorbs the milk.
Eggs
Bind the cooled rice mixture and help it set firm during baking.
Milk
Cooks the rice into a soft, creamy base and adds richness to the pudding.
Preserved apricots
Add fruity sweetness and a tart contrast to the mild rice.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to its golden browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir in the eggs only once the rice has partially cooled. Adding beaten eggs to very hot rice can scramble them and leave streaks, while cooled rice mixes them in evenly so the custard-like mixture sets smoothly in the oven.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

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