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Dessert

Rice, Ground, Custard Pudding

A custard pudding made with ground rice, milk, almonds, and spices, served with a spiced milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Rice, Ground, Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice custard

  1. Boil the milk with the bay leaf, bitter almonds, and brown sugar for 15 minutes.

  2. Gradually stir in the ground rice and let it boil for a few more minutes until thick.

  3. Dip cups in cold water and pour the mixture into them.

  4. Once cold, turn the contents out onto a plate.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, boil the milk or cream with cinnamon, lemon peel, bay leaf, and brown sugar for 15 minutes.

  2. Once cooled, add the beaten egg yolks and heat gently without boiling.

  3. Thicken with a little ground rice two minutes before removing from heat, then stir in the Madeira or sherry.

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. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Almond + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 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

Ground rice
Thickens the milk into a set custard as it boils and is later used to thicken the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and add thickness and richness when gently heated.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of both the custard and the sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness to the custard and the sauce.
Madeira or sherry
Adds aroma and a fortified wine flavour to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce gently without boiling. Egg yolks scramble and curdle when they get too hot, leaving a grainy sauce instead of a smooth one. Keep the heat low once the yolks go in.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, almond, sugar, rice, cinnamon, egg, sherry. 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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