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Dessert

Small Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding served in small buttered cups, flavored with sugar, nutmeg, lemon, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Small Rice 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.

Make the base

  1. Simmer the rice in the milk until thick.

  2. Add the butter and thick cream, then bring to a boil.

  3. Let it cool, then mix in the beaten egg yolks and whites, sugar, nutmeg, grated lemon, and cinnamon.

Fill and bake

  1. Butter small cups and place orange or citron at the bottom.

  2. Fill the cups about three-quarters full with the mixture.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 45 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with sweet 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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Thickens as it simmers in milk, giving the pudding its body and creamy texture.
Egg yolks and whites
Set during baking, giving the pudding structure and a custard-like firmness.
Thick cream
Adds fat and richness, producing a smoother, softer texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the rice cooks in and absorbs.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the cream and eggs.

The step that matters

Let it cool before adding the eggs. Adding beaten eggs to very hot mixture can scramble them. Cooling first lets the eggs blend smoothly so they set evenly into a uniform custard when baked.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More rice pudding recipes

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

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