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Dessert

Rice Meringue

A baked rice pudding topped with a sweet meringue layer.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Rice Meringue

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rice

  1. Pick over the rice, wash it clean, and boil in water until soft.

  2. Drain the water and let the rice cool.

Make the pudding

  1. Add milk, beaten egg yolks, sugar, and nutmeg to the rice; mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

Make and brown the meringue

  1. Let it cool, then beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add sugar and flavoring to the egg whites, then spread over the pudding.

  3. Brown the meringue slightly in the oven, being careful not to scorch it.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

Rice
Softened by boiling, it forms the body and bulk of the pudding.
Milk
Provides liquid and richness that gives the pudding its creamy texture.
Egg yolks
Help set the custard, giving the pudding a tender, cohesive texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the light, stiff meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue hold its structure and brown.

The step that matters

Browning the meringue. Sugar in the meringue darkens quickly under heat, so it can scorch before it browns evenly. Watching it closely and removing it once lightly golden keeps the topping sweet and pale rather than bitter.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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