Skip to main content
Dessert

Excellent Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding made with milk, raw rice, raisins, and sweetened with sugar and flavoring.

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

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Excellent Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA very moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the pudding

  1. In a large baking dish, combine the milk, raw rice, salt, sugar, and flavoring.

  2. Stir in the seeded raisins.

Bake

  1. Bake for 2.5 hours, stirring occasionally, until the rice is tender and the pudding is set.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Rice + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vanilla + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Milk
Provides the liquid that the rice absorbs and the custard-like body that sets as it bakes.
Raw rice
Absorbs liquid and softens during baking, giving the pudding its body and texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly at the surface.
Seeded raisins
Add pockets of chewy sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake slowly and stir occasionally. Long, gentle baking lets the rice absorb the milk and soften without scorching. Occasional stirring keeps the rice from settling on the bottom, so the pudding cooks evenly and sets into a uniform texture.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, sugar, vanilla. 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 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipes