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Dessert

Rice Meringue

A baked rice pudding topped with a browned meringue.

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 and wash the rice, then boil it in water until soft.

  2. Drain the water and let the rice cool.

Bake the pudding

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

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

Make the meringue and finish

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

  2. Add sugar and flavor with lemon or vanilla, then spread over the pudding.

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

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
Forms the body of the pudding and absorbs the milk as it softens.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets into a creamy custard base.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness to the pudding.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and stabilises the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Browning the meringue. Meringue can turn from golden to burnt quickly in the oven. Sugar caramelises and darkens fast at high heat, so watch closely and stop once lightly browned.

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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