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Dessert

Ground Rice Pudding

A baked pudding made with ground rice, milk, lemon peel, cinnamon, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Ground Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the rice mixture

  1. In a saucepan, bring the milk to a boil.

  2. Add the ground rice, lemon peel, and cinnamon, stirring continuously.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes, then remove from heat and let cool.

  4. Once cooled, stir in sugar, beaten eggs, and nutmeg.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a baking dish with puff pastry.

  2. Pour the rice mixture into the dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) until light brown.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Eggs
Set when baked, adding structure and a custard-like richness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice cooks in and the eggs set within.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown during baking.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Adding beaten eggs to a very hot mixture can scramble them. Cooling first lets the eggs blend smoothly and set into an even custard when baked.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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