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Dessert

Baked Rice Pudding

A baked dessert made with rice, raisins, sugar, milk, and water, flavored with cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Baked Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the rice

  1. In a pudding dish, combine the rice and raisins.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the rice and raisins; let it sit until the rice absorbs the water.

  3. Add the sugar, milk, salt, and cinnamon to the rice mixture.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 2 hours.

  2. Stir occasionally to prevent burning and to keep the fruit from settling.

  3. If the milk dries out, add more milk as needed.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Starch that thickens as it absorbs liquid and sets the pudding's body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the rice absorbs and the creamy base of the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the surface during slow baking.
Raisins or currants
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring and keeping the milk topped up. Rice and sugar in milk can scorch on the bottom of the dish during long baking, and fruit sinks if not stirred. Stirring spreads the heat and keeps the fruit distributed.

“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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