Why it works: Rice and raisin work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 565 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Rice Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the rice and raisins with a little water, as directed in No. 58, but do not steam the rice.
Once cooked, stir in the beaten eggs and sugar.
Let the mixture simmer for 4 to 5 minutes.
Set aside to cool.
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.
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Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together565 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,481 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Raisin + eggtop 23% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,556 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,744 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
- Eggs
- Set the pudding as they cook, giving it a custard-like body.
- Rice
- Forms the bulk of the pudding, absorbing liquid to become soft and tender.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps balance the eggs' savoriness.
The step that matters
Simmering after adding the eggs. Eggs thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the mixture boils hard. Keeping the simmer gentle lets the egg proteins set smoothly and evenly through the pudding.
Swap the raisin
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, egg, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Coconutfits about as well
- Raisinthe original
- Lemonfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against rice, egg, 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.
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