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Dessert

Ground Rice Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, ground rice, sugar, eggs, almonds, and almond essence.

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 ↓

Ground Rice Pudding

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

  1. Reserve ½ cup of milk from the quart.

  2. Heat the remaining milk in a pot until boiling.

Make the pudding

  1. Add the rice to the boiling milk and stir until it thickens.

  2. In a bowl, mix the sugar, eggs, pounded almonds, almond essence, and salt.

  3. Combine the thickened rice mixture with the egg mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a spoon can be inserted without seeing any milk.

  2. Serve warm.

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

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

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Milk
Provides the liquid base and moisture that the rice swells in and the custard sets from.
Rice
Its starch thickens the boiling milk, giving the pudding body and a soft, spoonable texture.
Eggs
Set as they heat, adding structure so the pudding firms rather than staying liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the savoury dairy and egg flavours.
Pounded almonds
Add nutty aroma and flavour, and a little body to the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until the pudding is set. The eggs firm as they heat, so underbaking leaves the centre runny, while overbaking can make the eggs curdle and the texture dry. Testing with a spoon for visible milk shows when it has set.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Peanutfits about as well
  3. Milletfits about as well
  4. Sesamefits about as well

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