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Dessert

Rice Cups

Rice cups are a sweet rice pudding served in individual cups, made with rice, milk, water, sugar, egg, butter, and optional cream, wine, nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice Cups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice

  1. In a pot, combine rice, water, milk, and salt. Heat until boiling, but do not let it boil over.

  2. Once cooked, beat the egg with sugar and stir it into the rice mixture along with the butter.

Shape and serve

  1. Wet cups with cold water, then pour the mixture into them.

  2. Allow the cups to cool, then turn them out onto a dish.

  3. Serve with sweetened cream flavored with wine and nutmeg, 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch thickens with cooking liquid, giving the pudding its body and soft texture.
Egg
Sets when heated, helping the pudding hold its shape once cooled and turned out.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess, and its sugars brown lightly during cooking.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother mouthfeel and richer flavor.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the mild, creamy flavor of the milk.

The step that matters

Heat without boiling over. Milk scorches and boils over quickly, and scorched milk sticks to the pot and gives a burnt taste. Keeping heat controlled lets the rice cook gently and evenly.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, egg, sugar, butter, cream, wine):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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