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Dessert

Baked Rice Pudding

A baked pudding made from soaked rice, milk, egg yolks, sugar, butter, nutmeg, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Baked Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the rice overnight in 1 pint of milk.

  2. In the morning, add 1 pint of milk and heat slowly until scalding hot.

Make the custard

  1. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolks, sugar, butter, and nutmeg.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until the pudding is set, but do not allow it to whey.

  2. Top with a meringue made from the egg whites.

  3. Serve cold or warm as preferred.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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
Absorbs milk as it soaks and cooks, giving the pudding its body and chewy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice cooks in and the custard sets from.
Egg yolks
Thicken and set the custard, adding richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the set texture of the custard.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer mouthfeel and a smoother, silkier custard.
Egg whites
Whipped into a meringue topping that adds light, sweet contrast on top.

The step that matters

Bake until the pudding is set, but do not allow it to whey.. Egg proteins set as they heat, but overbaking tightens them too much and squeezes out liquid, causing whey to separate. Stop once the pudding is just firm.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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