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Dessert

Ground Rice Puddings

A baked pudding made from ground rice, milk, butter, eggs, lemon rind, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Ground Rice Puddings

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. Moisten the ground rice with ½ cup of new milk.

  2. Add 1 cup of boiling milk and stir over heat for 10 minutes.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Cream the butter in a bowl.

Finish the mixture

  1. Beat the eggs and mix them into the rice mixture.

  2. Add the grated lemon rind and sifted sugar, then beat the mixture for 20 minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter six small molds and divide the mixture evenly among them.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 18 minutes.

  3. Serve immediately with sifted loaf sugar on top.

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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Eggs
Set during baking, giving the pudding structure and a custard-like firmness.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the rice and keeps the pudding moist.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a soft, smooth mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavour of the milk and eggs.

The step that matters

Let the rice mixture cool before adding the eggs. Hot rice can scramble the eggs, leaving lumps instead of a smooth mixture. Eggs set when their proteins heat, so a cooled base keeps the texture even and creamy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More rice pudding recipes

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

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