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Dessert

French Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding with grated apples, egg yolks, sugar, nutmeg, wine, and lemon, topped with whipped egg whites and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

French Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Steam or carefully cook the rice until tender.

Make the apple mixture

  1. In a bowl, mix the grated apples, egg yolks, sugar, nutmeg, wine, and the juice of the lemon (reserve some juice for the egg whites).

  2. Bake this mixture in the oven until set.

Assemble and bake

  1. Form a pyramid with layers of rice and the apple mixture, starting and ending with rice.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff, adding the reserved lemon juice, and cover the entire pudding evenly.

  3. Sift white sugar over the top and bake in the oven until golden brown.

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

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

  3. Apple + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

  5. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk and body of the pudding, providing its structure between the layers.
Tart apples
Add moisture, tartness and fruit flavour that balances the sweetness of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Bind the apple mixture and help it set firm when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms a light, golden topping when baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the topping brown to a golden colour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites. Egg whites must be whipped until stiff so they hold their shape and bake into a light, even topping. Under-whipped whites will collapse and become dense or watery.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

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