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Dessert

Plain Rice Pudding

A simple rice pudding made with rice, milk, sugar, lemon rind, and butter, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Plain Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the rice

  1. Combine rice, cold water, and salt in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Drain the water and rinse the rice with cold water, then drain well.

Cook the pudding

  1. Combine the rice, sugar, milk, and lemon rind in a stewpan and bring to a boil.

  2. Reduce heat and let simmer for 1 hour, stirring occasionally with a fork.

  3. Stir in the butter and remove the lemon rind.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 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

Rice
Forms the body of the pudding as its starch softens and thickens in the milk.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the rice and sets into a creamy custard-like texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly at the edges in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished pudding.

The step that matters

Simmering with occasional stirring. Milk scorches easily on the bottom of the pan. Stirring with a fork during the hour-long simmer keeps the rice from sticking and burning while it absorbs the milk and thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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