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Dessert

Rice Pudding with Fruit

A sweet rice pudding cooked with milk, apples, currants or raisins, bound with egg, served warm with cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Pudding with Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. In a pot, combine the milk and washed rice.

  2. Add the quartered apples and currants or raisins.

  3. Simmer slowly until the rice is very soft.

Bind and serve

  1. Stir in the beaten egg to bind the mixture.

  2. Serve warm with cream and sugar.

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

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Rice + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Liquid the rice absorbs and cooks in, becoming soft and creamy.
Rice
Starch that softens and thickens with the milk, giving the pudding its body.
Egg
Sets when heated, binding the mixture and adding richness to the pudding.
Apples
Soften during simmering, adding moisture and a light tartness to the pudding.
Currants or raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly until the rice is very soft. Milk scorches easily on direct heat and can stick to the pot. Gentle simmering lets the rice absorb liquid and soften evenly, giving a creamy texture rather than a burnt base or firm grains.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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