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Dessert

Rice and Raisin Pudding

A sweet pudding made from rice flour, milk, raisins, sugar, butter, egg yolk, and cream, flavored with vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rice and Raisin Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the raisins

  1. Soak the raisins, remove seeds, and stew them slightly.

Make the pudding

  1. In a saucepan, heat 3 cups of milk until boiling.

  2. Add sugar, butter, and vanilla bean or extract to the boiling milk.

  3. Mix rice flour with reserved milk and stir into the saucepan.

  4. Beat the egg yolk with cream and stir in just before removing from heat.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a mold dipped in cold water and chill before serving with fruit sauce.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the pudding its body and set.
Egg yolk
Enriches the custard and adds richness and smoothness as it sets gently.
Cream
Adds fat and softness, making the pudding creamier and more tender.
Raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to the pudding's soft texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice flour thickens into the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolk and cream. Add the egg yolk and cream just before removing from heat and avoid boiling. High heat can scramble the egg proteins, leaving the pudding grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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