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Dessert

Portuguese Sweet Rice

A sweet rice pudding made with milk, sugar, eggs, cream, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Laurel and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 691 recipes. Both carry cinnamyl acetate, which smells sweet aromatic, cinnamon. The science ↓

Portuguese Sweet Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice and boil it in the milk with the sugar and laurel leaf until soft, about 1.5 hours.

  2. Remove the laurel leaf and let the rice sit off the heat for 5 minutes.

Finish and chill

  1. Gradually stir in the beaten eggs and thick cream.

  2. Heat the mixture until it reaches boiling, then let it cool, stirring occasionally.

  3. Transfer to a glass or pie dish and refrigerate for 2 hours.

  4. Before serving, sift powdered cinnamon or burnt almond dust over the 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. Laurel + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together691 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 the milk, giving the dish its body and substance.
Eggs
Beaten eggs thicken the mixture when heated, setting it into a creamy, sliceable texture.
Thick cream
Adds fat and richness, making the custard smoother and more tender.
Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and helps soften the rice as it cooks in the milk.
New milk
Cooks the rice and forms the creamy base of the custard.

The step that matters

Heating the egg mixture to boiling. Eggs thicken as their proteins set with heat, but overheating can curdle them. Heat until the mixture just reaches boiling, then let it cool, so it sets smoothly rather than turning grainy.

“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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