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Dessert

Boiled Rice and Date Pudding

A pudding made from boiled rice mixed with dates and served with a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and dates work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 985 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Boiled Rice and Date Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice and slowly add it to 2 quarts of boiling water with 1 tablespoon of salt.

  2. Boil for about 30 minutes, or until soft.

  3. Drain the rice in a coarse strainer and rinse with hot water.

  4. Let the rice stand in a warm place to dry.

Shape and serve

  1. Mix the stoned and cut dates with the rice and mold it.

  2. Serve with a syrup made from 1½ cups sugar and 2 cups water.

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. Sugar + datestop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together985 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Rice + datestop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooked rice starch softens and binds, giving the pudding its body and shape when molded.
Cut dates
Dates add chewiness, moisture and natural sweetness throughout the molded rice.
Sugar
Sugar in the syrup adds sweetness and a glossy, moist finish to the served pudding.

The step that matters

Drying the rice after rinsing. Rice that still holds surface water becomes sticky and mushy, so it cannot hold a clean mold shape. Letting it stand warm lets excess moisture evaporate first.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sugar. 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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