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Dessert

Cold Rice Pudding

A chilled rice pudding made with boiled rice, eggs, sugar, flavoring, and served with custard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cold Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  3. Mix the sugar, flavoring, and salt into the yolks.

Make the batter

  1. Add enough cold boiled rice to the yolk mixture to form a stiff batter.

  2. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into cups and place them in a pan filled with hot water.

  2. Bake on the back of the range for 30 minutes, then transfer to the oven and bake for 40 minutes.

  3. Once cooled, place the cups on ice and serve with rich cold custard sauce.

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

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

  2. Vanilla + ricetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Rice + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,396 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Eggs
Beaten whites trap air for lift, while the yolks enrich and set the pudding.
Cold boiled rice
Provides the bulk and body that holds the stiff batter together.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and softens its texture.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold air that gives the pudding its lift. Stirring or mixing vigorously deflates them, leaving a dense result instead of a light one.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, rice, sauce. 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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