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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A sweet dessert made from rice, milk, eggs, sugar, and optional raisins, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cook the rice until tender.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and sugar together.

Make the pudding

  1. Add the milk to the cooked rice and bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in the yolk and sugar mixture.

Top and bake

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites with 5 tablespoons of sugar until frothy.

  2. Spread the egg white mixture on top of the pudding as frosting.

  3. Place in a 400°F (200°C) oven to brown.

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 + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  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

Rice
Cooks into soft grains that give the pudding its body and chewy texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the rice and creates the creamy base.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard as they set, and whites whip into a foam that browns on top.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilize the beaten egg whites.

The step that matters

Stir in the yolk and sugar mixture. Egg yolks scramble when they meet very hot liquid. Stir the yolks in gradually and keep the mixture moving so they thicken smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

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 →

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