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Dessert

Chocolate Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made by cooking rice in milk, water, cocoa, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Chocolate Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the pudding

  1. Mix the milk, hot water, rice, salt, and cocoa in a double boiler.

  2. Cook slowly for 2 hours.

  3. Add the butter, vanilla, and sugar, then cook for an additional 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with whipped cream.

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. Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar 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 liquid and creaminess, and its proteins and sugars help the pudding set and brown slightly.
Rice
Its starch swells and thickens as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and texture.
Cocoa
Supplies the chocolate flavor and color that define the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the rice grains as they cook.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Vanilla
Adds aroma that rounds out the chocolate flavor.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for 2 hours. Gentle heat in a double boiler keeps the milk from scorching on the bottom of the pan. It also lets the rice starch swell and soften gradually, so the pudding becomes creamy rather than gluey or grainy.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Cocoathe original
  4. Peanutfits about as well

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

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