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Rice Milk

A sweet pudding made by cooking rice in milk, sweetened with sugar and garnished with nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Rice Milk

Why it works: Milk and rice 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 Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and wash the rice.

Cook

  1. Put the rice in the milk and set it over low heat to boil.

  2. When the rice is very soft, add sugar to taste.

Cool and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a bowl and let it cool.

  2. Grate nutmeg on top before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice softens in and becomes the creamy body of the pudding.
Rice
Absorbs the milk as it simmers, softening and thickening the pudding into a creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the finished pudding.

The step that matters

Simmering the rice in milk over low heat. Milk scorches easily on the bottom of a pot, and rice needs slow, gentle heat to soak up liquid evenly and soften without burning or sticking.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits less well

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

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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