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Dessert

Baked Rice Pudding

A baked dessert made from rice, molasses, cinnamon, salt, butter, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Baked Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Mix

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the rice, molasses, cinnamon, salt, and butter, then stir in the milk until well mixed.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake for three hours, stirring the rice from the bottom halfway through.

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. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch thickens the milk and softens into a creamy, pudding-like texture as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, deep brown color, and a rich, slightly bitter flavor.
Milk
Serves as the cooking liquid that the rice absorbs, setting into a custard-like pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the finished pudding.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, aromatic spice that balances the sweetness of the molasses.

The step that matters

Stir the rice from the bottom halfway through baking. Rice grains are heavier than the liquid and sink and scorch on the bottom of the dish during a long bake. Stirring redistributes them so they cook evenly in the milk.

“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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