Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding made with milk, eggs, sugar, suet, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice in two or three waters.

  2. Put the washed rice in a saucepan with cold water and bring to a boil until it swells.

  3. Drain the rice in a colander.

Prepare the custard and suet

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl.

  2. Add the sugar and milk to the eggs.

  3. Stir until combined.

  4. Trim the skin from the suet.

  5. Shred the suet as finely as possible.

Assemble and bake

  1. Grease a quart dish with clarified butter or dripping.

  2. Place the drained rice in the greased dish.

  3. Pour the milk and egg mixture over the rice.

  4. Sprinkle the shredded suet on top.

  5. Grate the nutmeg over the top.

  6. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 40 minutes to 1 hour.

  7. Serve once baked.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the pudding and absorbs the milk as it bakes, giving body.
Eggs
Bind the custard and help it set into a soft, sliceable texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the rice and forms the creamy custard.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the custard brown lightly on top.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist and tender.

The step that matters

Pre-cooking the rice until it swells. Rice that is not swollen before baking can stay firm, since the oven time is too short for raw grains to fully soften in the custard.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, 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.

More rice pudding recipes

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

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipesRice Batter CakesRice Batter Cakes11 recipes