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Dessert

Rice Pudding with Prunes

A baked rice pudding flavored with nutmeg, sugar, butter, and stewed prunes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Pudding with Prunes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the rice

  1. Boil rice with 1 quart of milk or water until the liquid is absorbed.

  2. Add 1 quart of milk and continue boiling until the rice is creamy.

Bake and serve

  1. Remove from heat and stir in salt, grated nutmeg, sugar, butter, and stewed prunes.

  2. Transfer to a baking dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

  3. Brown the top nicely and serve cold, without sauce.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Starch that absorbs the milk and swells, giving the pudding its creamy, thick body.
Milk
Liquid that cooks into the rice, providing moisture and a rich, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the top take on color as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the finished pudding.
Stewed prunes
Add fruit sweetness and a deep, tangy flavor throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Cooking the rice in milk until creamy. Milk scorches easily on direct heat and the starch can stick to the pan. Cooking gently and stirring keeps the rice tender and the milk from burning, so the texture stays smooth before baking.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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