Skip to main content
Dessert

Plain Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made by cooking soaked rice in milk with sugar and butter, flavored with vanilla, nutmeg, or cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Plain Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the rice

  1. Soak the washed rice in 1 pint of warm milk for 2 hours, keeping the milk warm in a double boiler.

  2. Add a pinch of coarse sea salt and baking soda to the milk.

  3. Once the rice has absorbed the milk, add 1 quart more milk.

Bake

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding dish and stir in sugar, melted butter, and your choice of vanilla, nutmeg, or cinnamon.

  2. Place the dish in a pan of hot water and bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 2 hours, covered.

  3. If the rice becomes dry, add enough hot milk to fill the dish.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Rice + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Raw rice
Starch that softens and thickens the milk into a creamy pudding texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the rice absorbs and the custard-like body of the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly on its surface.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the texture and mouthfeel of the pudding.
Baking soda
Raises the pH of the milk, which can soften the rice and speed its cooking.

The step that matters

Keeping the rice moist during baking. Rice keeps absorbing liquid as it bakes, so it can dry out and become stiff. Adding hot milk when it looks dry keeps the pudding creamy, and the covered water bath cooks it gently so the milk does not scorch or curdle.

“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 →

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipes