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 ↓
Baked Rice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the rice
Wash the rice in cold water until clear.
Cook the rice in boiling water until soft.
Drain and cool.
Make the pudding
Combine the rice, milk, raisins, sugar, and orange or lemon peel in a saucepan.
Cook slowly for 15 minutes.
Add the beaten eggs and stir well.
Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish.
Grate a little nutmeg on top.
Bake until well colored.
Serve
Invert onto a serving dish.
Serve with sweet cream.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Rice + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together565 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,067 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
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Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,684 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Rice
- Forms the body of the pudding as it cooks and softens into a creamy base.
- Milk
- Provides liquid that cooks with the rice and sets with the eggs into a custard.
- Eggs
- Set when baked, binding the pudding and giving it a firm, sliceable structure.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the pudding and helps the surface brown during baking.
- Raisins
- Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
The step that matters
Add the beaten eggs and stir well. Eggs thicken when heated but can scramble if the mixture is too hot. Stirring them in evenly, off the heat or over gentle heat, keeps the custard smooth and well set.
Swap the orange
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, raisin, sugar, butter, egg):
- Vanillafits better
- Coconutfits better
- Figfits better
- Orangethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, raisin, sugar, butter, 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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