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Dessert

Southern Rice Pudding

A sweet rice pudding made with milk, rice, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon peel, cinnamon, and mace, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Southern Rice 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.

Cook the rice

  1. Soak the rice in the milk for 2 hours in a double boiler.

  2. Increase the heat and simmer until the rice is tender.

Make the custard base

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together, then whisk in the eggs until light.

  2. When the rice is almost cold, combine all ingredients.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

  2. Serve warm with sauce or cold with 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. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Softens as it simmers in milk, giving the pudding its body and bulk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice absorbs and that sets into a creamy pudding.
Eggs
Set during baking, binding the pudding and giving it a rich, custardy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps create a tender texture when creamed with butter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Simmer the rice until tender before combining. Rice must be fully softened before mixing, because it will not finish cooking in the oven. Eggs added to hot rice can scramble, so letting it cool to almost cold before combining helps keep the custard smooth.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

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