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Dessert

Baked Almond Pudding

A baked custard made with ground rice, butter, almonds, milk, sugar, and eggs, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,456 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Baked Almond Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pastry

  1. Roll out the pastry thinly and line a pie dish with it.

  2. Decorate the edge with pastry stars cut out with a fancy cutter.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, bring the milk and sugar to a boil.

  2. Mix the ground rice with a little milk, then stir it into the boiling milk and sugar.

  3. Cook for five minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Mix in the butter, almonds, and beaten eggs thoroughly.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the prepared pie dish.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Butter + milktop 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 + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the milk into a soft, set pudding body as it cooks and bakes.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firmly during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, moist texture to the pudding.
Ground sweet almonds
Contribute nutty flavour and body to the filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice thickens and the eggs set.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the top brown during baking.

The step that matters

Cook the rice mixture while stirring constantly. Ground rice thickens as its starch swells in hot liquid. If the mixture is left unstirred, it can scorch on the base or form lumps, and the thickening becomes uneven before the pudding ever reaches the oven.

“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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