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Dessert

Good Ground Rice Pudding

A rich pudding made from ground rice, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon rind, and brandy, baked in a pastry-lined dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Good Ground Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA very gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very gentle oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. Mix the ground rice with ½ pint of milk until smooth.

  2. Pour this mixture into 1 pint of boiling milk, stirring constantly for 10 to 12 minutes over gentle heat.

  3. Add the butter, sugar, and salt, stirring until combined.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Gradually mix in the egg yolks.

  6. Add the egg whites.

  7. Add the grated rind of 1 lemon.

  8. Add the brandy.

Prepare and bake

  1. Prepare a buttered dish with a border of pastry.

  2. Pour the pudding into the dish.

  3. Drizzle clarified butter on top.

  4. Moisten the pastry with cold water.

  5. Sprinkle sugar over the pastry and the pudding.

  6. Bake in a gentle oven at 300°F (150°C) for 45 minutes.

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

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

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

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

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ground rice or rice flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set custard-like pudding base.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks with the rice and forms the body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the top brown lightly during baking.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a creamy texture.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help give the baked pudding structure.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice into boiling milk. Starch in the ground rice can clump if added without constant stirring, leaving lumps. Steady stirring over gentle heat keeps the mixture smooth and lets the starch thicken evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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