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Dessert

Rice Plum-pudding

A baked rice pudding flavored with nutmeg or cinnamon and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Rice Plum-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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the pudding

  1. In a large pot, combine the milk and sugar, and sweeten to taste.

  2. Add nutmeg or cinnamon to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the washed rice and picked raisins.

  4. Pour the mixture into a baking dish or a tin mold.

Bake or boil

  1. Bake for 2 hours or boil in a tin mold until set.

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. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

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

  4. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Provides starch and body that thickens the milk as the pudding sets.
Milk
Supplies liquid and milk proteins that set into a soft, custard-like texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the surface during baking.
Raisins
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake or boil until set. The pudding sets as the rice softens and the milk proteins coagulate under gentle heat. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it dry and tough at the edges.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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