Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Meringue

A rice pudding topped with a sweet meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Rice Meringue

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the rice in the milk until soft.

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs with 4 teaspoons of sugar and stir into the hot rice.

  3. Flavor with vanilla and pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then stir in the remaining 4 teaspoons of sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue evenly over the pudding and bake until light 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Rice + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla 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

Rice
Softens in the milk and gives the pudding its body and bulk.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that the rice cooks in and the custard sets from.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the pudding as they set, while whites whip into the meringue topping.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites in the meringue.

The step that matters

Spread the meringue evenly over the pudding and bake until light brown.. Meringue needs to be spread so it touches the edges, sealing the surface. Baking until light brown sets the whites and browns the sugar; underbaking leaves it weepy and soft.

“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.

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipes