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Dessert

Southern Rice Pudding

A sweet 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.

Prepare

  1. Soak the rice in the milk for 2 hours.

  2. Heat the mixture in a farina kettle until the rice is soft.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Stir in the beaten eggs and whip until well combined.

  3. When the rice is lukewarm, combine all ingredients.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered mold and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 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

Milk
Liquid that cooks the rice into a creamy, tender body.
Rice
Starch that softens and thickens the pudding, giving it body.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding and enrich its texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth mouthfeel.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and helps the crust brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Combine the eggs only when the rice is lukewarm. If the rice mixture is still very hot when the beaten eggs are added, the proteins in the eggs can scramble, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth, evenly set pudding.

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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