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Dessert

Nursery Plum Pudding

A baked rice pudding made with milk, butter, eggs, raisins, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Nursery Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Soak the rice in warm water for 2 hours.

  2. Drain the water and shake the rice to loosen it.

  3. Add 1 pint of milk to the rice.

  4. Simmer gently until the rice is dry and tender.

  5. Add another pint of milk and heat until hot.

  6. Stir in the floured raisins, cover, and cook for 20 minutes.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, combine the butter, rice flour, remaining pint of milk, beaten eggs, and sugar; mix thoroughly.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for about 40 minutes.

  2. Serve warm with butter and sugar or sugar and cream.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Starch that swells and softens in milk, forming the body of the pudding.
Milk
Liquid that cooks the rice and sets with the eggs into a creamy custard.
Eggs
Proteins that set on baking, binding the pudding and giving it structure.
Butter
Fat that adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Raisins
Chewy dried fruit that adds sweetness and pockets of texture.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the rice is dry and tender. Milk contains sugars and proteins that scorch easily on direct heat. Gentle heat lets the rice absorb liquid evenly so it softens without sticking or burning on the base of the pan.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

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