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Dessert

Ground Rice Pudding

A baked pudding made with sweet milk, ground rice, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Ground Rice 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.

Make the batter

  1. Bring 1 pint of milk to a boil with nutmeg and sugar.

  2. In the other pint of milk, mix the ground rice to form a thin batter.

  3. Strain the hot milk into the rice batter while stirring continuously.

  4. Add the whisked eggs and a sprinkle of salt, mixing well.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 70 minutes.

  2. Serve with apricot preserve, marmalade, or any jam.

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 + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  2. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Ground rice
Thickens the milk into a set, creamy pudding as it cooks.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding structure and a custard-like body.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice cooks in and gives the pudding its creaminess.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Stirring the hot milk into the rice batter. Pouring hot milk in while stirring constantly keeps the thin rice batter smooth; pouring too fast or without stirring can cause lumps where the starch clumps before it disperses.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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