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Dessert

Rice Lemon Pudding

A lemon-flavored rice pudding made with milk, rice flour, butter, eggs, sugar, and optional wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Rice Lemon Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the milk in a pot.

  2. Stir in the rice flour that has been moistened in a little milk while it simmers.

  3. Let it come to a boil, then remove from heat.

  4. Add the butter and let it cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix in the grated lemon peel, lemon juice, egg yolks, and sweeten to taste.

  2. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  3. If desired, add the wine before serving.

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. Milk + ricetop 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Rice flour
Thickens the milk as it simmers, giving the pudding its body.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich and set the pudding, while whipped whites lighten its texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and flavour of the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice flour thickens into the pudding.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Whites hold air that gives lightness; stirring vigorously knocks the air out and leaves a denser, heavier pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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