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Dessert

Rice and Fruit Pudding

A pudding made from cooked rice, fruit, and a custard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 and Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Grease a pudding mold.

  2. Sprinkle the mold with bread crumbs.

Cook the rice

  1. Cook the rice in boiling salted water until tender.

  2. Add butter, beaten egg, and sugar to the rice.

Assemble and serve

  1. Layer rice, then fruit, then more rice in the mold until full.

  2. Turn out onto a warm dish before serving.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat fruit syrup to boiling.

  2. Thicken the syrup with cornstarch.

  3. Heat milk to boiling.

  4. Whisk in egg, sugar, and vanilla.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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
Forms the bulk of the pudding and sets into a tender body as it cooks.
Egg
Binds the rice mixture and helps it set firm when cooked.
Fruit
Adds moisture and sweetness, with its syrup flavoring the pudding.
Cornstarch
Thickens the fruit syrup into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard sauce, adding richness and body.

The step that matters

Thicken the syrup with cornstarch. Cornstarch thickens only when the liquid reaches a boil and is kept stirred, because its starch granules swell and gelatinize with heat. Adding it to a syrup that is not hot enough leaves the sauce thin, and overcooking or stopping the heat too early can cause it to break down or turn gluey.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

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