Skip to main content
Dessert

Indian, or Ground Rice Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, ground rice or Indian meal, eggs, butter, sugar, spices, wine or brandy, and raisins or currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Indian, or Ground 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. In a pot, thicken the milk with the Indian meal or ground rice as you would for porridge.

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the butter, sugar, spices, wine or brandy, and raisins or currants.

  2. Combine the thickened milk with the egg mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 1.5 hours.

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

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

  3. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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 sets into a custard-like pudding when baked.
Indian meal or ground rice
Thickens the milk so the pudding holds body rather than running loose.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable custard as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a softer, more tender texture.
Raisins or currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk. Cooking the milk with the meal or ground rice swells the starch so it thickens before baking. If the milk is not thickened properly, the pudding may stay watery and fail to set evenly in the oven.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipesRice PuddingRice Pudding22 recipes