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Dessert

Rice Pudding with Fruit

A rice pudding cooked with milk, currants, and egg, served with sugar and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Pudding with Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine rice and milk in a stew-pan; heat gently without boiling until the rice absorbs the milk.

  2. Add dried currants and beaten egg to the rice mixture.

  3. Boil the mixture in a bag until the rice is tender.

Serve

  1. Serve with sugar and cream.

  2. Add more fruit if desired.

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

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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 absorbs milk and softens during cooking.
Milk
Cooks the rice and gives the pudding its creamy, soft texture.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set into a firmer, custard-like texture.
Dried currants
Add sweetness and chewy texture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Milk scorches and can boil over easily on direct heat, and high heat can curdle the egg. Gentle heat lets the rice absorb the milk evenly and keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the currant

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

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

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