Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Pudding

A creamy pudding made with milk, rice, sugar, eggs, cinnamon, lemon peel, and corn starch, baked and topped with stiffened egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cream Pudding

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 ↓

Cream Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 375°F (190°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the custard

  1. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C).

  2. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  3. Stir in the corn-starch mixed with a little cold milk.

  4. Add the beaten egg yolks and sugar to the mixture.

  5. Incorporate the heaping cup of boiled rice and stir until it begins to thicken.

  6. Add the cinnamon and grated lemon peel, then pour into a buttered baking dish.

Bake and top

  1. Bake until well set.

  2. Whip the egg whites with a little sugar until very stiff and spread over the pudding.

  3. Return to the oven until the top colors lightly.

Chill and serve

  1. Cool and refrigerate until serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Rice + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together933 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

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

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

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the custard and set the pudding, while whipped whites form the light topping.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and creaminess for the custard.
Cooked rice
Adds body and a soft, substantial texture to the pudding.
Corn-starch
Thickens the milk mixture so the custard holds its shape when set.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilize the whipped egg white topping.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites. Whites must be whipped until very stiff so they hold volume and form a light topping. Under-whipped whites will deflate and weep, while the sugar helps stabilize the foam.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipes