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Dessert

Quick Pudding

A quick rice pudding made with rice, eggs, cream or milk, nutmeg, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Quick Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Boil the rice until soft.

  2. Break in the eggs and add the cream or milk and nutmeg.

Finish and serve

  1. Bring to a boil again.

  2. Serve with bits of butter on top.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Softens into the starchy body that gives the pudding its base.
Eggs
Set with heat to thicken the mixture and bind it together.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, making the pudding creamy.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness as it melts over the top.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil again. Egg proteins set when heated, so boiling the mixture hard after the eggs go in can curdle or scramble them. Keep the heat controlled so the pudding thickens smoothly.

“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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