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Dessert

A Good Boiled Rice Pudding

A boiled rice pudding made with milk, sugar, lemon rind, bitter almonds, eggs, and optional candied orange rind and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A Good Boiled Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Combine the rice and milk in a pot; heat slowly until it simmers, then cook until the rice is soft and thick.

  2. Stir in the sugar, grated lemon rind, and pounded bitter almonds while the mixture is still hot.

  3. Whisk the eggs and add them to the mixture; let it cool.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a well‑buttered basin or mold, filling it completely.

  2. Cover with buttered paper and a floured cloth, then boil for exactly one hour.

  3. Let it stand for 2 to 3 minutes before turning it out.

  4. Serve with sweet sauce, fruit syrup, or a compote of fresh fruit.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  3. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 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

Eggs
Bind the custard and set it firm when cooked, giving the pudding its body.
Whole rice
Swells as it simmers in milk, forming the thick starchy base of the pudding.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to form the creamy base and carries the sweetness through.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds flavor to the cooked rice and milk.
Butter
Enriches the pudding with fat and keeps it from sticking to the basin.

The step that matters

Boiling for exactly one hour. Eggs set as they heat; too little time leaves the pudding loose, while overcooking can make it rubbery and dry. Keep the water boiling steadily throughout.

Swap the orange

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

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

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