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Dessert

Rice Custard

Rice custard is a sweet dish made from rice, milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and a pinch of salt, baked and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Rice Custard

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 and custard

  1. Combine the rice and milk in a pot, adding a pinch of salt.

  2. Steam until the rice is soft.

  3. Mix in the beaten egg yolks and sugar thoroughly.

  4. Add vanilla and do not cook further.

Top and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Gradually add the powdered sugar.

  4. Spread the mixture over the rice.

  5. Brown slightly in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with tart jelly.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Rice + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Softened by steaming, it gives the pudding its body and bulk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that cooks with the rice into a creamy pudding.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard, and stiffly beaten whites form the light topping that browns.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilise the beaten egg whites.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the whites, sweetening the topping and helping it hold its shape.
Vanilla
Adds aroma that rounds out the sweet custard flavour.

The step that matters

Mix in the beaten egg yolks and sugar thoroughly.. Egg yolks can scramble or turn grainy if they meet hot food unevenly. Mixing them in thoroughly spreads the heat evenly and keeps the custard smooth and thickened.

“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.

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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