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Dessert

Delicate Rice Pudding

A sweet rice pudding made with milk, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, butter, and optional cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Delicate Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Boil rice in milk until absorbed.

  2. Turn out rice into a bowl and let it cool.

Make the mixture

  1. Add beaten eggs, nutmeg, and sugar to the rice.

  2. Butter a basin and pour the mixture in.

Finish the pudding

  1. Boil for 1 hour.

  2. Optionally, boil a bit of cinnamon with the milk and rice.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk and body of the pudding as it absorbs the milk.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to create a creamy, tender base.
Eggs
Set when heated, giving the pudding structure and a custard-like richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly at the edges.
Butter
Adds richness and keeps the pudding from sticking to the basin.

The step that matters

Let the rice cool before adding the eggs. Hot rice can begin to scramble beaten eggs on contact, leaving lumps. Letting the rice cool first allows the eggs to blend smoothly, so the mixture sets evenly as it bakes.

“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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