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Poor Man's Cheese Pudding

A baked cheese pudding made with rice, milk, salt, and grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Poor Man's Cheese Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

  1. Add the uncooked rice and salt to the milk and pour into a buttered baking dish.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until nearly tender, stirring occasionally.

  3. Add the cheese.

  4. Bake longer until browned.

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

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

  2. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  3. Rice + cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Brown rice
Its starch thickens the milk as it cooks and gives the pudding its body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the rice and forms the creamy base.
Cheese
Melts into the pudding for richness and flavour and browns on the surface.

The step that matters

Add the cheese once the rice is nearly tender. Cheese added too early can become oily, stringy or over-browned during the long bake. Adding it when the rice is nearly tender lets it melt evenly into the custard, then brown on top in the final bake.

“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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