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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A creamy milk and rice dessert flavored with sugar and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rice 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 ↓

Rice Pudding

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.

Make the pudding

  1. Combine milk, rice, sugar, nutmeg, and salt in a double boiler.

  2. Cook slowly for 2 hours, stirring often from the bottom until thick like cream.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer to a baking dish and brown slightly in a 350°F (175°C) oven if desired.

  2. Serve very cold.

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that slowly thickens into a creamy pudding as it cooks.
Rice
Softens during slow cooking and releases starch, which helps thicken the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its body as it cooks down.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Cooking slowly and stirring from the bottom. Milk and sugar scorch easily on the bottom of the pan over long cooking. Frequent stirring keeps the base from sticking and burning, while gentle heat lets the rice soften and the starch thicken the milk evenly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits less well

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

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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